


It Takes A Village

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Baby Fic, Crack, Cuddling, Established Relationship, First Time Parents, Fluff, M/M, Reconciliation, Sex, Tears, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-06-02 10:25:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 77,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6562666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>James laughs, a tired and almost pained sound, and shakes his head. With a sigh, he presses his teeth to his lip, and then carefully, he works open his coat. Within, bundled tight, is a shape smooth and rounded. Not a bomb, not a cruel device. As James moves, the shape shifts and Q curses. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>“What -”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“If you're quiet, she won't wake,” James tells him softly.</i>
</p><p>James returns from a job with an unusual souvenir...</p><p>[aka the 00Q Baby Fic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a branch out from our original Concatenation series, and follows a similar time line with similar established events. If you haven't read it, though, never fear! Imagine canon 00Q. 
> 
> So, just imagine canon.
> 
> Written for anyone who has ever asked for a fic like this. It started as a "ooh what if?" and became this monster.
> 
> Not beta'd, mistakes are our own!

Bond's comms go silent outside of Peru, the day he's due to return to London. For six hours, Q Branch scours the frequencies for even a whisper of him, or a whisper of what could have happened to him, and find nothing.

Eight hours after silence, the bomb Bond was meant to stop does not go off, and M breathes a sigh of relief.

Twelve hours after silence, Q sits in the office and runs the codes for his and James’ personal signals. Even a blip on the radar will be enough to calm his nerves, yet when he locates that thin electric pulse in Hanover, he finds he isn't relieved but desperately nervous.

Why did he go silent? What had happened? Why didn't he send a message, even one just to Q, that was more than a blink on old radio frequencies?

Sixteen hours after silence, Q goes home exhausted. He takes the tube and nearly misses his stop. He allows the automatic feeder to feed his cats and curls on the sofa. He's asleep before Desmond manages to even make himself comfortable against Q’s stomach.

Two days after mission complete, at three-eighteen in the morning, there's a knock on Q's door. He doesn’t move, but in sleep awakens. Three knocks like the crackle of static pulse signalling life. Three more follow like the dull thud of bullets finding their mark.

Eyes snapping open, Q jerks upward with a gasp, watching blood fade from his fingers into shadows where he clutches his pillow beneath. His cats leap to the floor with quiet thumps and descend the stairs. A flare alights and Q squints at the screen that blinds him from the buzzing phone beside his bed.

Caller: 007  
[BLOCKED NUMBER]

His phone skitters to the floor, charging cord caught against his ankle and yanked from the wall in his hurry. Q barrels down the stairs so quickly he catches himself out of a stumble against the bannister. The cats scatter to safety. Without bothering to check the cameras nor even the peephole, Q clatters open the locks with sleep-clumsy fingers and flings wide the door.

“James.”

The man is swaying on his feet from exhaustion but he doesn't look hurt. He isn't bleeding, he isn't bruised. He offers a smile that immediately reaches his eyes and Q realizes the sound he hears is his own, weak and soft with relief.

“We thought you were dead.”

James just shakes his head, blinking quickly before offering another smile.

“I’m right here, darling.”

Q sighs and steps closer to hold him, to press his face to a familiar chest and breathe in the warmth of him. He had seen the blip. He had some news of James’ survival. He steps close and James steps back, a hand against his chest as he does, the other out to keep Q at bay.

“Careful,” he says.

Q’s too relieved to hide his concern, too near to sleep to hide his hurt. He doesn’t come any closer, though, folding his hands against the hem of the undershirt he wears - one of James’ own. Instead, Q steps back once, then again. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you a hazard?”

“No,” James says, with a soft smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, yes, but I’m unarmed if that’s what you mean.”

“Did they take you?”

“No.”

“Will you come in?” Q endeavors a smile this time too, taking solace in the sight of him, if nothing else. “I’ll put on tea for you.”

James nods, relieved, and follows Q into the house, closing the door behind himself. He leans against it with a heavy groan and shifts his weight oddly, hand still pressed to his chest. Q feels his brows furrowing. 

“Did they bug you?”

“No.”

“James, what's wrong?”

“I’m unharmed.”

“That isn't what I asked.”

James laughs, a tired and almost pained sound, and shakes his head. With a sigh, he presses his teeth to his lip, and then carefully, he works open his coat. Within, bundled tight, is a shape smooth and rounded. Not a bomb, not a cruel device. As James moves, the shape shifts and Q curses. 

“What -”

“If you're quiet, she won't wake,” James tells him softly.

“She?” Q makes a helpless noise and steps closer again. “James, she? Did you steal a child?”

“No, Q, I didn't steal bloody anything. She's mine.”

Q’s lips part but there’s no sound that passes them. He shakes his head and takes another breath atop the first. Still nothing. Releasing it all in a huffed sigh, he tries again and says, “But you don’t have…”

“I do.”

The cats emerge from beneath the sofa to trot closer, greeting James with trills and chirps. They too slow on the approach, tails high and noses raised, taking stock of a scent new to them. Q can scarcely see them through the shadows infringing on his vision, tunneling narrow until he reminds himself to breathe.

“I’ll put on tea,” he says, stepping away with another glance to the bundle on James’ chest, ignoring readily James asking for him to come back. It’s easy to pretend not to hear him, beneath the waves of white noise crashing against his ears. It’s easier not to think and only to act, to vent the pressure building in his chest.

With a very soft curse, James follows. Q can hear his footsteps. He listens as James sets his jacket to the table and the heavy little bundle on top. He listens as with quiet breath, James takes his shoes off and sets those aside too. Then the kettle begins to boil and he hears nothing else.

Q jerks when James sets his hands to his shoulders, but sighs when familiar lips set to his hair.

“Let me explain.”

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

“She’s mine not by choice.”

“There is a science to creating children, believe it or not.”

“There are also accidents.”

“How old, James?”

His agent swallows. “Four months.”

From over a year ago, Q calculates. Several assignments ago. He was in deep cover. For weeks he didn't check in and they had to follow him via GPS. There was a woman. There were many. Their faces flash before him and against each James’ lips part groaning, against slender figures he presses the hard lines of his body, and inside of each with their slim legs snared around his hips he…

Q tries to swallow the sound that rises within him and suffices only to make it very small. He shrugs free of James’ hands and snares the kettle up before it can raise its voice in place of his own. It could have been any one of them. He wants to know. He doesn’t want to know. He knows too much already.

James doesn’t reach for him again, stepping back to watch as Q takes down mugs for them and pours the water before the tea. He curses, then, and pours the water out to put the tea in first, pouring again. His hands - certain hands, skilled hands, elegant hands - are so unsteady that Bond averts his gaze as if privy to something he shouldn’t see.

“You’re angry.”

“No,” Q says. “I’m processing. I’m processing a great deal of information all at once. How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That she’s yours. Maybe it’s extortion, a set-up -”

“What was I meant to do?” James whispers. “When her mother, a woman I remember well, leaves an infant at my feet and tells me it’s mine, and vanishes as quickly as she came… was I meant to walk away? Tell her I’d like to see the paperwork first? Q, please…”

Q turns to face James, a mug extended, straight-armed. The tea’s dark surface shimmers from Q’s shaking. He tightens his fingers against the ceramic, but only when Bond’s hand folds over his own do his tremors ease. A small, fussy sound emits from the bundle of blankets on the table. Desmond, paws on the table and leaning closer to sniff, flees. Q watches as pudgy fists lift and lower, and tries to slow the freefall of his heart.

He wants to look. He isn’t sure he can yet. James’ child, ostensibly, lays fitful on his kitchen table. His partner, presumed missing in action and potentially deceased, has returned both alive and a father. Q takes a stoic and practiced sip of tea. Then he takes another.

“Promise that you won’t assume forgiveness if I tell you that I missed you.”

James cradles his mug in his hands and shakes his head, offering a small smile.

“I missed you,” Q says, sucking bergamot bitterness from his bottom lip, and holding it pinned between his teeth.

“I missed you,” James tells him honestly, voice quiet, words hushed in awe and adoration. He says nothing more. He doesn't apologize again, he doesn't try to convince Q that this won't change what they have.

He'd have come home immediately upon dismantling the damn bomb had the woman not shown up. In the din of his memory, with so many nights just like that one, James barely placed her. Hardly forgettable, but his mind was elsewhere when she was moaning softly against his chest. She handed him the child, explaining in quick Spanish how the baby would do better in London. James didn’t have time to ask how she’d found him. How she knew he was in Peru again. Something sharp and clever in her eyes had answered that for him, and then she had gone.

She left without another word, and James left with a daughter.

He had delayed by days, trying to keep her quiet when he traveled, trying to find someone to fabricate paperwork so he could get the little thing into the country. It occurred to him many times that it was a hoax, a woman seeking an advantage for her child, nothing to do with James, but something else, something deeper, tugged at him to keep her near.

Another fussy sound from the table and James sighs heavily. She is an arrival in his life. Q is his constant. He has no more attachment to her than anyone he has ever saved on a mission. Surely, he can let her go. Surely he can -

“I just need a few days. There are places that work with orphans, good places we can find to foster her.” The baby's voice breaks on a gurgling wail and she begins to sob, reaching with tiny hands. “She’ll be safe, and I can -”

Q hears only distantly Bond’s words. Something about putting this behind them. Something about suspecting the woman as another intelligence agent, not one working against his goals but alongside, their congress brought about to see if she could sift any details from him. Something about her sanitized accent, that she said she knew he’d be back. Q hears the words, but he pays them no heed. It’s possible. In fact, it seems likely.

Q doesn’t care. All he can hear is the rising, hiccuping sobs that pull his heart like marionette strings, and move it jerking and shuddering against his ribs. Like one of his devices gone wrong, howling its alarm at being mistreated, Q’s senses hone onto the discord and the rest fades away. He makes a noncommittal sound as Bond continues, and sets his tea to the counter.

Circling around the table, Q comes to face the little baby laid out in a makeshift cradle of James’ jacket, and the world around him vanishes entirely. There is an immediate familiarity, inexplicable but undeniable. Dark drifts of hair fluff downy against her head. He can’t see her eyes for her crying, chubby face contorted and pudgy little arms flailing as she kicks and struggles with infantile frustration against everything and nothing. Q knows the feeling.

“Let me,” James sighs, and the exhaustion Q sees writ in familiar script across both their faces strikes him like a blow to the gut, emptying his body of breath. He shakes his head.

“She has your ears,” he says.

“Poor thing.”

Bond watches him, as Q watches her. He’s rarely held babies before - only those that new parents brought in to work, to the coos and coddles of their co-workers - but he remembers being told to support their head, and keep them close. He lifts her as he would a particularly valuable prototype.

One of a kind.

Irreplaceable.

Hushing her in the same soft whispers he uses with their cats, Q cradles her against his chest, one hand beneath her bottom, the other at her back. He breathes in deeply against her wispy hair and goosebumps prickle all along his arms. She smells like him, only softer. A rosebud rather than a full and flowering bloom. She smells like him, and Q blinks away the heat from his eyes that springs up damp upon impact.

“James,” he breathes. “What do we do?”

James steps closer and spreads a palm just above her tiny head before finally setting it there. Her little hiccups have eased to quiet fussing as Q holds her close and gently bounces on his feet. He has known her five days. Five days. His voice is tight when he speaks again. 

“In the morning, I’ll start calling around. Find a foster family she will be happy with -”

“Don't be stupid, 007,” Q whispers, and James can't help it, he laughs. It's a weak sound and damn near helpless but he laughs, pressing a hand to his lips before moving it to his eyes, feeling the tears there he hasn't let fall since this whole mess started.

“I don't know,” he admits, finally answering Q's question properly.

Q hums, and when the baby against his chest hiccups in response, he tries and fails to fight down the reluctant smile that tugs against his lips. He isn’t foolish. He knows what Bond’s work often requires. He knows the risks of it. On especially grim nights, listening to grunts and moans near-muted on the comms, Q has contemplated the possibility of this in particular.

He knows the risks their lives entail and those involved in everything they do, from international espionage to walking down to the shop. He feels it all more acutely than Bond, who can turn that awareness off and on as needed. Q doesn’t have that skill.

But the idea of giving up a piece of the man, his man, in such a helpless little bundle strikes Q as unconscionable, whatever his feelings of bitterness, whatever his irrational jealousy. He would wonder, always. He would look, always.

“You need to sleep,” Q tells him. “Both of you. She’s traveled more in her four months - in the last week - than I have in my entire life, poor creature.”

“Q,” James says, leaning close to press a kiss against his brow, words muffled against him. “I know your heart. You’d adopt every cat in the world if you could. But we can’t…”

“We’ll sort it out.”

Bond lingers only a moment more before drawing back, enough to look at him. “You’re just as knackered as I am. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“I think most clearly when I’m knackered, and I’m telling you, we’ll sort it out.”

“When I’m in the field?” James asks, lowering his voice even as its force increases. “When you’re working eighteen hours at a stretch?”

Q meets his gaze evenly, hardly angry, but stubborn. Hopelessly, beautifully stubborn. James shakes his head again but falls mute as Q says simply, “We’ll sort it out, 007. That’s what we do, remember?”

James can do nothing more than nod, astounded, always, by this beautiful man, by his mind and compassion and pride. He is braver than he knows, stronger than he could ever let himself believe. He is more important to James than life itself.

“We’ll sort it out,” he agrees, pressing another kiss to Q's cheek, lingering there before he pulls back with a sigh. “Let's go upstairs.”

There, James takes an overcoat, one even he rarely wears but in the darkest winters in London, and ties the sleeves to the pull-up bar that hangs in the doorway to their closet. The drawstrings that keep the fishtail of his coat tugged tight get tied to the bar as well, creating a makeshift cradle. Without a word, James takes the little thing from Q's arms and holds her near. 

“It’s the only way she stayed quiet on the boat we took,” he explains, setting his daughter carefully into the coat. “Guess we can rule out seasickness.”

“You hung her in a bag?”

“A cradle,” James corrects him, mildly.

Swallowing a curse, Q checks the ties. He checks the bar. Surveying the structural integrity of this haphazard set-up, he sighs and shakes his head. It’s fine. It’s sturdy. If it can hold up Bond, it can hold up a baby.

None of this stops Q from dragging over his computer chair to rest just beneath, pillowed in case one of the ties slips.

“She needs - what does she need? Nappies? Has she eaten? How often do they eat? Christ,” he sighs, pressing his fingers to his eyes, glasses skewed. “The shop opens at seven-thirty. No - Sainsbury’s higher up is open at seven. I’ll make a list. I’ve no idea what to put on the list. I’ll ring my - no,” he decides immediately, conversing with himself. No, he will not ring his mum at four in the morning and tell her his partner’s just come home with a baby. “I’ll look online, then I’ll pop ‘round and get what she needs, and…”

“You will sleep,” James tells him, holding Q's face gently between rough hands. “You will lie down with me and we will get some rest. When we wake we will make a list and get what we need.”

“But -”

“She will sleep ‘til morning,” James assures him. “And so will we.”

Q frowns but nods, a slow incline of his head. He turns into James’ hands when he strokes his hair, and goes to press to his chest when James envelopes him in his arms.

“I have never felt this unprepared in my life,” Q admits. “Even with the cats, I had bowls and food and bedding, a cat carry and their vaccination history. I don't even know her name.”

“Her mother didn't give me one for her,” James admits. “That's something we can find together, too.”

Q can feel the vibrations of exhaustion in Bond’s body, his own pressed flush against. He’s trembling just from standing, and in a selfish moment, Q is grateful that Bond shut down comms as he completed his self-extraction with a baby in tow. The terror of such a concept strikes Q now only distantly, but it’s enough that he wraps his arms around James’ middle and holds him even tighter.

Q isn’t proud when he finally lets a few tears slip hot from his eyes, but with little more than a snuffle, he keeps them quiet.

“It’s all a bit much to take in, isn’t it,” he murmurs.

“Just a little,” Bond says, turning a kiss against Q’s temple, grasping his hair with firm fingers.

With another quick sniff and a stiffening of his jaw, Q leans back to unbutton James’ shirt, collar to hem and cuffs in turn. He slips it from his shoulders and kisses him softly. He gives him another after he tugs off his undershirt. Belt and trousers follow, each removed with gentle hands that act to stop from trembling.

“Bed,” Q tells him. “Please sleep. I’m going to find a blanket for her.”

“She's swaddled,” James reminds him, but he lets Q go as he must, knowing if he doesn't that he will fret and not get any rest at all. By the time Q comes back, James is sprawled in bed snoring softly, one hand beneath his face the other outstretched to Q’s side of the bed. Q hasn't the heart to wake him.

So he makes a list. He pulls up information on four month-old babies on the Internet. He pulls up pregnancy books and Those First Few Months. He finds the nearest baby supply stores to their home and makes a catalogue.

She will need formula and iron-rich rice. She will need diapers and a proper bed. Clothes. Socks. Toys. She will need books with textures and colorful words. She will need somewhere to roll on her own without getting in trouble. Blankets and pillows and rattles, a tub and baby soap and shampoo, powders and creams and ointments and -

It's dawn by the time Q sets his computer aside, hands trembling and eyes aching as though they're filled with sand. As James said, the baby hasn't woken, content to sleep in her father's coat, hanging in a doorway. He resists the urge to look at her again. He will see her. He will see her in every light and any time she wakes at night. He will see her grow.

It strikes him so fiercely and so strongly that he needs a moment to even his breathing again before he can climb into bed. James barely moves as he does, just curling his arm closer and pulling Q near with the motion.

Q isn’t sure that he’s ever truly imagined being a parent. His orientation made considering it difficult; his studies and his work negated any other thoughts of wanting a traditional family. He wonders if James ever imagined it - ever wished for it. He would guess not, and for not dissimilar reasons. His history and his work. The risk inherent in allowing anyone near for longer than an evening, let alone settling.

But beyond his bravado and his bravery, Bond guards with cynical defenses and hard walls a gentle spirit. Q has felt it, when they lay together on quiet nights. He has seen it, when James awakens sick with guilt for the things he done in the name of duty. He has watched it grow and flourish like flowers through cracking pavement in the home they’ve shaped together, a warm and happy place for them and the cats with whom they share their affections.

And if they’ve managed to save the bloody world together, Q reasons, as the sun begins to rise and sleep finally takes him, then surely, surely they can manage this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I wonder if I could outfit the Aston with a car seat.”_
> 
> _“We could simply buy one.”_
> 
> _Q snorts. “And trust her to some mass manufacturer? For shame, Bond.”_

When Q awakens to an alarm, he scrambles for his phone, tilting half-blind onto the floor to find it. He blinks uncomprehending at the black screen, fumbling for his glasses. He turns it on and it reminds him that it’s the weekend, and he’s off-duty until Monday.

Because it isn’t his phone’s alarm shrieking shrill at him, half-past eight on a Saturday and three hours after he fell asleep.

It’s the baby in the closet.

It’s James’ baby.

It’s theirs.

His legs ensnared around James’ own, he tries to pull himself from the bed but topples shoulder-first to the floor with a quiet thump. The ceiling comes into view as he slides his glasses back on, the last vestige of his dignity retained in this calm and collected gesture. Q savors it, amidst the baby’s fitful cries, as one of the last such moments he may have for a very long time.

He hears James get out of bed and walk briskly to the coat hanging in the doorway. He takes the bundle from its depths and hushes her against him.

“What's this fuss, hmm? What's all this, we talked about this.” James’ words are slurred from sleep but clear enough. The tiny thing hiccups against him and resumes her howling, little hands slapping softly to his chest and curling against him into tiny fists.

“Come on, darling girl, that's no way to greet the day,” he continues, turning on the spot and hoisting her up higher against him. “You start off like this and the day will scream right back.”

For a moment more, Q lays where he’s slipped, sprawled against the floor. For a moment more he listens to their little conversation, one-sided as it is, and allows the dizziness to rise and settle in time with the rhythm of his heart. A shadow passes over him, and he tilts his gaze to Bond, standing above.

“Alright, darling?”

Q hums assent, watching little feet kick frantic with aimless movement. With a deep breath, he sets his hands beneath himself and levers upward, placing fingers against the bed and rubbing his eyes with the other. “Alright,” he agrees. “I thought we’d gone nuclear or something.”

“Well, she has.”

Q blinks. Another breath conveys James’ meaning, and Q thins his lips in thought. “I wondered what that was. I thought you were in need of a shower.”

Bond lifts a brow. “Come now, Q, I’m not that bad.”

“You’re not that good either,” he snorts, fighting down a smile. “Do you have - you know -”

“Shirts. Undershirts. When I ran out of nappies.”

“Bloody hell,” Q mutters, before spreading his fingers across his lips and glancing to the infant, who shows little mind for his curse. “Well, use another and we’ll go get something proper. Tea?”

“Coffee.”

“Right.”

James hums as Q passes, eyes on the baby in his arms who continues to squirm and frown in her discomfort. He can't blame her, really, it's far from pleasant being forced to sit in your own shit. With a sigh, he gathers his undershirt from the day before and makes his way to the bathroom.

He cracks a window before he starts and allows himself to mutter unpleasantries under his breath as he works. The little girl doesn't make his work harder. She kicks her feet but lays still enough as James carefully washes her down. She catches one foot when he lifts her to set the undershirt beneath and gurgles a laugh. James’ face splits into a smile before he can help it.

“That's better,” he tells her, working his shirt into the neatest configuration he can against the little body. It will be a relief to have her in diapers again. “Now, make sure to remember huh? When you're eighteen and wanting to get drunk, remember that moment of revulsion and don't drink enough to soil yourself.”

His daughter lets her foot go and shrieks a laugh at him, and James snorts before taking her up in his arms again.

“Terror,” he tells her fondly, stroking her wispy hair from her forehead before moving to take her downstairs.

Q greets him at the bottom, a bleak-smelling cup of instant coffee in hand that will do the job until the pot finishes its drip. He offers it to James and opens his arms, and in a careful shuffle, takes the little bundle against himself. “Well, now we don’t smell quite so dreadful,” he murmurs. “You and I don’t, anyway.”

Bond gives him a wry look but earns his revenge when she grabs with clumsy fingers against Q’s glasses. Q tries to dissuade her with a fluttering little series of no no no no but only sighs as she presses a lens against her mouth, drooling happily against it. He blinks, watching her watching him, and sighs.

“Troublemaker,” he praises her, turning a half-blind gaze to his partner. “Shower,” he says, a familiar instructive clip to his voice. James hides his smile against the mug. “I’ll dress when you’re done, then we’ll go. She’s bound to be famished by now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I am, and my stomach’s three times the size of hers.”

Bond doesn’t argue his logic. Q watches him ascend again, and cradling the now-happy baby to his chest, attempts to attend the cats who balefully watch this new scenario at a distance. He manages at least to trigger the electric feeder, rolling his eyes when they wait for him to leave the kitchen again before entering.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to buck up, lads,” he tells them, shifting the baby onto one arm and seeking through the cabinets for anything amenable for her to eat. There’s hardly anything amenable for him to eat, sparse as he keeps things, and he gives the milk in the refrigerator a wary look before deciding against it. It’s a credit to James, above and beyond the call of duty, to have managed this while extracting himself. Q can scarcely manage it on this pleasant Saturday morning.

She seems contented for the moment, chewing with gummy joy against the frames of Q's glasses as she's carried around. She's remarkably quiet when not upset, taking in the world with wide, chocolate-brown eyes. She responds when Q talks to her, turning to look at him and studying his features and his lips as they move. Her reply is a squawk of joy before resuming her meditative teething.

“Your daddy,” Q tells her, extracting his glasses and offering his finger instead, "is a very brave man. Very brave. He's a right mess sometimes and stubborn, but he is the bravest man I know.”

The baby answers with a series of vowels and a giggle, squeezing Q's finger and smiling at him when he smiles back. This is how James finds them when he returns downstairs, much cleaner and looking a lot more awake. Q glances toward him with a smile, a little embarrassed, and offers James his glasses. With a tilt of his head, he accepts them and dutifully wipes them clean on his jumper.

“You see,” Q murmurs, conspiratorial with their charge already. “He can be very kind when he’s not completely insufferable.”

James fights down a smile and settles Q’s glasses back on his nose. The baby cradled and squealing giddy between them, they share a kiss in passing, lips held softly together. With a sigh, Q gives her a gentle squeeze.

“I love him entirely too much,” he confesses to her, before relinquishing her back to her father. “I’ll just be a moment. Clothes. Coffee.”

The latter, now cold, he consumes in a single swallow. He takes the stairs two at a time and after using the bathroom, dresses quickly. He pauses long enough only to share attention with their distressed cats, reassuring them to keep their whiskers stiff until things settle again. He takes up his very long, neatly organized list as he returns. His hair splays wild. There’s still a smudge on his lenses. He’s wearing one of James’ jumpers mismatched to checkered grey trousers, and trainers beneath.

“You look lovely,” James tells him. Q snorts.

“I’m a mess. I’ll hold her while you drive. I’ve made a list -”

“We were going to work on that together.”

“You needed sleep and I couldn’t make myself do the same. It’s only,” he pauses, sighing. “A few dozen things. Each of those required in multiples. We’ll need to make three stops if we want to get it all at once -”

“How can we?”

“How can -”

“In the Aston Martin?”

“Just lift up the false floor,” Q blinks, shrugging. James regards him with something like apprehension, brows lifting. “The false floor,” Q repeats. “The one I built into it in case you need to smuggle someone - 007, do you listen to a word I say when you’re taking my equipment?”

“Usually only to how expensive it is,” James admits, ducking a gentle shove from his partner. Against him, the baby clings to his shirt and watches the proceedings with wide-eyed enthusiasm. It's strange how quickly and simply she already fits between them. James moves her to one arm, laying her down a little so her head remains supported, and uses the other to draw Q close. “False floor it is,” he says. “We will smuggle London’s whole of baby supplies in a vintage car.”

Q tilts his head beneath the kisses that come, watching the little girl - their little girl - wriggle and coo between them. “James,” Q says, and when Bond hums in question, Q simply smiles. “I love you terribly.”

Bond knows. He knows from every loving or desirous or irritable look Q gives him. He knows from the barked commands and low moans and kind words. He knew before and he knows now, when so quickly Q has taken to an idea that before it was forced on them would have been a laughable impossibility.

“I know,” he says. “I love you too.”

“James,” Q asks again. Another hum. “I ought to tell headquarters that you’re back.”

He does, a message sent and a response returned quickly that M expects to see him first thing Monday. How they’ll explain this, how they’ll justify it remains undiscussed for now, with more pressing matters on their hands - a hungry baby and a house lacking in amenities for an infant. Settling into the car, baby held in his lap, Q makes faces at her as they pull out of the drive.

“I wonder if I could outfit the Aston with a car seat.”

“We could simply buy one.”

Q snorts. “And trust her to some mass manufacturer? For shame, Bond.”

When she’s sick with spit-up on his jumper, Q only sighs. With two cats, he’s become accustomed to bits of sick now and then, and it’s not his jumper anyway. They seek out a cradle first, and virtually all meet Q’s disapproval, but they settle on one that will suffice until he can engineer a better one himself.

Within, go sheets and waterproof liners, cotton blankets and a warmer knitted one, numerous sets of clothes that the two men spend far too long choosing, perhaps because they let their child grasp for whatever color or texture appeals to her most. By the time they stand, arms filled with baby and baby clothes alike, three salesgirls are watching them with fingers pressed to their lips to hide their delight.

Next comes all the babyproofing, once more scoffed at by Q and negotiated to stay only as long as it takes him to build prototypes of his own. So laden, they head to the counter. They are encouraged to open an account with the shop, for later purchases, and do so under James’ name. They ask after his daughter, what her name is, how old she is, and by the time they leave the store both James and Q never want to enter another one again.

“Two more,” Q reminds him, and with a groan, James gets behind the wheel.

The baby boutique would be harrowing on a good day; recently returned from assignment, it’s damn near insurmountable. There are endless options - clothes and toys, pacifiers and travel accessories, books and plush things and decorations. All are brightly colored. All are within the grasping chubby fingers of the infant they take turns carrying. Q examines every label to check for materials and recommended ages, obsessively pouring over the fine print, until he reaches a point halfway through, an hour passed, where he begins to laugh and can’t stop until he’s nearly sobbing.

“New parents,” Bond informs the shop clerk, who nods in sage understanding. “Very tired.”

“I - it’s an owl,” Q says, clutching the soft figure in his hands. He squeezes it and it emits a long, drawn out _hoooooooo_ and he doubles over again, fingers pressed to his eyes to staunch the tears. The baby against Bond’s chest giggles. “It’s an owl, James. An _owl_.”

He thought James was dead, and then he wasn’t. He returned alive, and with a daughter. Four days with sparse hours of sleep each night. A baby. Q’s shoulders hitch in a fitful sound and he sighs out loud and long against his hand and curses low.

Little fingers reach for the toy and the little girl - alternatively called over sixteen different names as they’ve all shopped together - babbles happily at it until Q gives it up. It’s love at first sight. And James can already tell how annoying the little hooting noise that currently so amuses his partner will become. His daughter hugs the toy to her and draws her hand down against the grey speckled fluff in a gentle pet.

Not long to go now. The final stop for food and nappies before they can return home and unpack everything and collapse.

“She needs sixteen hours of sleep a day,” James tells Q as they continue through the store and he peruses a pamphlet. The little girl is getting fussy, now, tired and hungry and most likely messy again, even though they’ve kept their trip to just under two hours. “Sixteen, Christ, what a relief.”

“Does it say they’ll happen all at once?”

Bond doesn’t answer, but loads an oversized bundle of nappies into the cart with a narrow look. “Some of them have to, don’t they?”

Bouncing the baby lightly, Q considers the question as they work their way to the shelves and shelves of little jars. This, he researched more than most things, and he points out to James the formulas and blended foods and soft cereals they’re after. He clears his throat, calculations complete, and his brow knits.

“She could alternate hours, waking and sleeping, but we’d wind up with at least a few together. A couple. Two, perhaps, before alternating again - that is, unless she’s inclined toward half-hours instead of whole...”

“I’ll take it. In whatever form, I’ll take it.”

It’s a far more fraught ride home, their little girl making her displeasure known in shrill tears. Q relinquishes her to James as he shuts off the car, and goes to the boot in his stead to seek out the groceries first. It all winds up piled in the center of the floor - they don’t see the cats at all - and the sense of relief is profound. Several crying spurts - most by the baby, one by Q - and two occasions of sick spit up, both times on Q.

Q assembles the cradle in their room for now, thinking to rework the spare room to be hers when she is a little older. Bond administers food and a bath as he works. Within the completed bed, clean linens applied, goes the newly-washed and diapered baby, dressed in snug and warm knit overalls. Within does not go the owl, in case she rolls on it or it rolls on her and she chokes in her sleep. Surprisingly, she finds rest quickly and without fuss, and this time it’s James who allows tears to roll.

“God, I’m tired, I am so bloody tired,” he murmurs, sobs breaking into a laugh before he wipes his eyes dry and sniffs. “What the hell are we doing?”

“Having a baby,” Q tells him, allowing his lips to quirk a little and amending. “Keeping a baby.”

“She’s more work than the bloody cats.”

“Cats hardly need work, James. You choose to cook for them, they don’t need it.”

“I feel like I’m being bossed around by M again,” James says. “My M, that damned unstoppable force of a woman.”

Dropping the messy jumper on the floor without a second thought, Q peels out of his clothes down to pants and an undershirt. He nearly falls, working off a sock. “If one adheres at all to the idea of reincarnation, perhaps she simply insisted on keeping an eye on you.”

“There’s a terrifying thought.”

“Is it?” Q muses, finally collapsing to the bed and dragging himself to his knees. He snares James by a trouser loop and drags him down to sit. “I find it reassuring.”

“You and she had a very different relationship.”

“Far less close than you,” Q smiles a little. Kneeling behind his agent, legs splayed, he strokes firm thumbs up the inside of his shoulder blades, hushing him only gently when he groans relief. “Did you know her name?”

“M? No.”

“Neither,” Q says, kissing the back of Bond’s neck as he rubs release through the taut muscles of his shoulders, down against his back. “Shame. There’d have been a formidable name to give her.”

With a hum, James agrees. He tried to guess at M’s name many times, never, of course, to her face. He had gone through any possible combination of consonants and vowels and had found not a single one that reflected that woman properly. He thinks of the last day that he saw her, her bravery despite the frown she wore to cover it, her intuition and ingenuity. She would have made an excellent agent.

Kincaid had liked her. Kincaid had liked no one, when James remembered him as a child.

“Emma,” James says after a moment. “We should call her Emma.”

“Emma,” Q echoes. He furrows his brow, and snapping his tone a little more taut, repeats, “Emma.” With a grin, and a tired snort tucked against James’ throat, Q repeats her name once more, with an impossible fondness that resonates through him like the ripples on a lake when a leaf falls gently against it. “Yes, I quite like that. Emma Bond. Agent Double-Oh Seven and a Half.”

James snorts again and this time the laughter continues, too tired to keep it in and uncaring for who hears, James allows himself to laugh. He’s exhausted, he’s sore, he has a child to care for now, and a man who loves him who is willing to do this with him. Not only willing, but enthusiastic, determined, happy to. James could not imagine himself luckier, not for anything.

He lays back on the bed, similarly undressed as Q is, and draws him close, pressing a kiss to warm parted lips.

“I love you.”

“I know,” Q answers, his smile lingering even as he kisses James again, and draws close in a tangle of heavy limbs.

There is so much yet to consider. So much yet to do. There are so many conversations that in an ideal timeline would have happened long before the arrival of a child in their life, between themselves and others, that have yet to be broached.

Perhaps he’s being foolish. Blithe. Naive, to undertake something like this with so little consideration. There had been virtually none, and while in every other aspect of Q’s life that would be unthinkable, he wonders now if there isn’t something worth noting in his haste. He hadn’t needed to consider. He knew. Instantly, he knew, that he could no more give up this child - however unexpected, and however unprepared they are - than he could James himself.

“We work well together,” Q whispers, as James nuzzles against him, easing beneath Q’s fingers in his hair. “In far more dire circumstances, with consequences beyond comprehension. When we disagree, we set it aside and act. When we act, it’s in tandem, and stronger than we’d be without. We fill in the other’s gaps. Don’t,” he laughs softly, when James draws a breath, a lurid suggestion perched on his lips.

With a sigh, James nods agreement to this as well. They are invaluable to each other, not only needing but wanting each other. It’s rare, it’s damn near magical to find that, especially in their line of work.

“We should sleep,” he suggests softly, “while she does. Then we can sort out the mess in our living room and find space for everything she’s now brought with her.”

“We have one day before we have to tell anyone.”

“Before we have to tell M,” James muses. “And I suppose Tanner will hear it from him, he always does. Eve will hear it through the door, though she will admit she never listens…”

“My parents,” Q mumbles.

“Will hopefully not be in the office.”

“Maybe that’s how we do it,” grins Q, kissing James again simply because he can, folding his arms snug around him simply because he can. “‘Mum, dad, my partner’s recently acquired an infant, with which I’ll be helping him co-parent. She’s the product of an illicit liaison with a potential secret service agent from another country, seduced in the field while I handled him on a highly classified MI6 mission to South America. I do not work at a bank, and her name is Emma.’”

“‘Congratulations on your grandchild’,” Bond adds, and Q has to duck his head to quiet his snorting laughter against James’ brow.

“Perfect. That’s resolved, then. And M?”

James hums low and long, considering. M will not find this situation adorable or amusing or at all amenable. He will not be lenient in giving them their time to look after an infant, he will hardly be sympathetic to the fact that she is James’ own. M will be the pinnacle of their difficulties, he’s certain.

“I suppose we should just tell M the truth,” James suggests.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You could tell her about the time you shot me,” Bond adds. Eve gasps, grinning, and Emma thrashes happily against her, bright baby smile wide with a giggle._
> 
> _“I will,” Eve says to her. “I’ll tell you about the time he couldn’t hold still for half a second so that I could take the shot.”_

“So let me see if I understand you correctly,” M says, setting his fingers in a steeple before himself. “You went off comms and put yourself and an infant in possibly monumental danger. You did this to illegally smuggle said infant into the country, because she was delivered to the door of your hotel suite by a woman you once shared a passionate night with.”

James purses his lips together and relaxes them again. “That’s correct, sir.”

“And now you have said infant in your custody, with no legal paperwork, no birth certificate and no guardianship rights to her whatsoever, and you would like me to grant you -”

“Paternity leave,” James says for him. “For four months, at the least. Please. Sir.”

M’s attention drifts briefly to the softly snuffling infant in her carrier, strapped like a bomb to Bond’s chest. Q swallows down a strangled, small sound and clears his throat. M levels him with a look instead.

“I expected better of you.”

Q blinks, lips parting. He shakes his head but doesn’t dare hazard a look to James or Emma in the seat beside him. His knuckles whiten, gripping his laptop as if it’s a lifeline. “Sir, I -”

“From him?” M says. “I’d expect precisely something like this. I’m less surprised than you could possibly imagine. But you -”

“I don’t intend to stop working,” Q says quickly. “Most of my work can be done from home, anyway and...”

“There it is.”

“But if one of us is away then the other can stay. Please know,” Q says carefully, “that I couldn’t have anticipated this any more than you. Or Bond, for that matter. Although he should have.”

James decides to say nothing here, preferring, instead, to duck his head to look at Emma, sitting happily in her carrier. She had given them a decent time to sleep before waking them absurdly early to demand formula. She hums once in a while, no tune, just a sound, perhaps to hear it or feel it against her lips. Otherwise she does not disrupt.

“M, I would never seek to pull someone as valuable as Q from the Service. He’s right that he should not have anticipated this, nor should he take responsibility or time off for it. I am not requesting this on his behalf, he can speak very much for himself,” James sends Q a pursed-lipped smile. “I am asking for her safety, sir, nothing more.”

“This is absurd.”

Bond doesn’t argue this, offering only on a mild shrug. Q wisely remains quiet.

“I could have you court martialed for what you’ve done,” M reminds the agent. “Let alone the British laws you’ve broken, consider the international laws - the risk at which you’ve put your cover and those who work with you… and you’ve the balls to come in and expect not only a complete absolution for it, but a holiday.”

“Believe me,” Bond says, “this isn’t what I’d call a holiday.”

Q thins his lips, eyes closing as he breathes out long.

“Four months,” James says. “I’m entitled to time off. It’s expected, in fact, that for mental and physical health, I take it. I’m merely asking it be condensed considering extenuating circumstances.”

“We wanted to be forthright with you,” interjects Q, quietly - very, very quietly. “We’re going to sort out the paperwork. We’ll take care of the legalities.”

M settles back in his chair, and on second thought, stands to pour a glass of scotch from the glittering crystal decanter beside the window. He does not offer one to either quartermaster, or agent. “I was willing to look the other way while you two carried on, as deference to my predecessor. You kept it within the realm of rumor. You didn’t let it come into work with you, barring the transcripts that the receptionists’ pool titters about after an assignment.”

“It isn’t against the law,” Q notes, his hopeful tone crumbling like moth wings as M scorches him with a look across his shoulder. “I mean, our ‘carrying on’ isn’t. Other parts are. That part isn’t.”

“We have rules against fraternization within the Service.”

“Wouldn’t my leaving the Service, for a time, counter that particular rule being broken?” James offers. He weathers the look that M levels on him and tempers his smile.

“This is not a joke, 007.”

“No, sir,” James replies, earnestly. “No, it is far from it. It is a situation I should have foreseen and planned on, and that is my fault. I don’t seek to push the blame to anyone, but least of all Emma. If anyone is blameless in this endeavor, she is. The time taken from assignments would be spent raising her, keeping her safe. That time would allow Q his sleep and to function on full capacity at work when he gets here.”

“There are legalities.”

“That we will sort out,” Q promises. “Through the proper channels.”

“Through our channels.”

Q tilts his head in an admission to which he daren’t voice his assent. His agreement is obvious enough without. M sips his scotch again and a minute ticks by, then another, before he returns to his desk.

“There are policies in place for parental leave. You’ll adhere to them entirely, for your security but more importantly for ours,” he tells Bond. “At your level, this means that your clearance is revoked, any of our equipment returned, and your communications strictly limited. You will, unless I can find a loophole, continue to receive pay at the same rate as if you were grounded. In essence, you are grounded.”

“Very good, sir,” Bond smiles.

“I’m not finished yet,” he says. “Due to your particular position and its sensitivity, your return will be by my invitation alone once the period of leave has expired. Should we find that we no longer require your services, you’ll be put to seed. Am I making myself clear?”

“Very,” James replies, and for once there is no smirk, there is no teasing glint in his eye. He listens to everything M says and takes it in. As much as he enjoys his games, his silliness in the office, when it matters, James Bond is always professional. M considers him with narrowed eyes, before sighing and drawing from his desk a piece of letterhead. Without a word he writes the document by hand and signs in before them both, and then hands it unfolded to James.

“All of your weapons,” he says. “Any communication devices issued to you by Q Branch that have not yet been revoked or broken.”

“Yes, sir.”

M gives him another look but nods, and his next words he directs at the little thing on James’ chest. “I’m so dreadfully sorry that you must spend four months cooped up with this man.”

Q snorts a laugh, muffling it into a grin. M regards him with a wry look, though not unkind.

“Since you’re being left bereft an agent, I’d like you to handle 009, forgoing,” he tells Q. “I’d rather not be bereft of you in the interim.”

“Of course, sir. Gladly.”

Bond manages to suppress a snort. M allows a sigh, burdened but in an achingly familiar way, and stands. Q mirrors him, quick to shake his hand and mumble a hurried thanks, but as Bond stands, M lifts his hand to ease him down again. He circles the desk and stands behind him, running a careful hand across Emma’s dark, tufted hair.

“Christ, she does look like you,” he says. “She’s got your ears.”

Emma shrieks her delight and wiggles, all her limbs going every which way in her enthusiasm. She turns to crane her neck back and look at the strange man who was in front of her and now stands behind her, like magic.

“Poor kid,” James agrees. He shifts not to get away so much as make the introduction of his child and his superior easier - loosening her from her carrier, he holds Emma in his arms instead. She’s dressed rather well today, in a new red overall, pink and white striped socks on her little feet. There is a clearly obvious spot of drool down her front but none of the adults, nor Emma herself, seem to mind it there at all. 

It takes M a moment to swallow his pride, his ire from moments before. He regards the little infant at some length, before finally clearing his throat. “May I?”

“Of course, sir,” Bond says, stoic as ever as he offers Emma out. She kicks wildly, chubby legs jumping up and down from Bond’s legs in delight. M takes her with practiced ease and holds her close, sighing softly.

“Both of my girls are away at school,” he remarks after a moment. “The eldest will start university in a few more years.”

“I didn’t know you had children,” Q says.

“Did you ever ask?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s good to know there’s still some secrets kept in this place,” responds M, the barest hint of a smile in his eyes. Emma pushes little fists against his jacket, a wiggly baby, healthy and happy. She drools a spot to match her own onto M’s tie. He doesn’t pay it any mind. “I remember when they were this age. I loved every minute of it, even the ones that drove me mad. It’s a tired old cliche, but one I found to be altogether too true - they grow up far too quickly.”

James watches his superior with a strange look of mingled surprise and wonder. He says nothing, he just lets the man carefully handle his daughter, lifting her and holding her near again as she makes endless chirpy sounds of delight and wonder of her own. After a while, with a sigh, M hands her back to her father, and Emma curls up happily against him.

“Four months, Bond,” he says. “And a return at my discretion only.”

“Understood, sir. Thank you.”

“You can both go.”

And so they both do.

Beyond the door they are immediately accosted by Eve who spreads her fingers over and over, demanding to hold the little bundle.

“She’ll drool,” James warns her.

“So do men in their sleep,” Eve dismisses happily, cooing at the little girl who shrieks joy back. “How did I not know about this?”

“My partner didn’t know about this,” James points out.

“Bond didn’t know about this,” Q adds, wry.

Eve rolls her eyes a little. “You’re a cad,” she tells James, amusement turning to delight as she takes Emma from him, cradling her on her hip. “But you,” she declares. “You are far too adorable to have come from the likes of him. You do have his ears, though.”

“See?” Q says, as Bond quiets a smiling curse behind his hand.

“I’m going to have all sorts of stories to tell you,” she continues. Several of the other administrative assistants peek above their desks to watch through the window, until James acknowledges them with a wink and they duck back down again. “As soon as your daddies have me over to babysit, I’ll tell you about the time they derailed an entire train together and disrupted the tube for days.”

“You could tell her about the time you shot me,” Bond adds. Eve gasps, grinning, and Emma thrashes happily against her, bright baby smile wide with a giggle.

“I will,” Eve says to her. “I’ll tell you about the time he couldn’t hold still for half a second so that I could take the shot.”

“Our child will grow up corrupted,” Q muses, only partially upset by this fact. He reaches to stroke Emma’s hair and smiles when she giggles again, loving the attention. Clean and happy and fed, she’s hardly a handful. She’s more like a bomb - entirely unpredictable. And, like a bomb, Q finds her as fascinating as he does frightening.

“She will grow up incredible,” Eve coos at Emma. “She will grow up knowing just what not to do on international assignments.”

“Like break all of her father’s equipment,” Q agrees.

“I hope she can at least hold her liquor,” James counters. He reaches for Emma to let her grasp his finger and tug it as she continues to clap gently against Eve’s side. Eve watches her with a warmth James rarely sees on her. He’s seen it in every single shop assistant’s face when he and Q have taken her shopping with them. He sees it again in the eyes of the administrators once more peering over at them. It must be something maternal waking up in every single woman who comes across her.

It’s rather daunting.

It’s delightful.

“Miss Moneypenny,” Q asks, “could I beg a favor from you?”

“You want me to come and babysit,” she says. “Absolutely, yes. I’m touched that you asked.”

He laughs, shoulders slipping to ease a little, and shakes his head. “No, no, I mean - yes. Yes. We will definitely need - you know - sleep. But I need some records from Q Division. 007’s got to return whatever equipment he still has, and it’s all in the logs.”

She doesn’t bother to feign ignorance, the conversation prior clearly overheard. “I’ll bring it by this weekend,” she says. “And bring back whatever’s still whole.”

“This weekend?”

“So that I can visit this little one again,” Eve grins, rubbing nose to nose with Emma, who grasps at her cheeks and kicks her feet. “If you’re not careful, I’ll bring her back with me too. Little lamb, look at you.”

Another few minutes are spent with Eve before she relinquishes the little thing back to her parents. She promises to come by with the records and promises to volunteer to be the supervisor in checking James’ guns that she takes from him. Then they’re left alone in the corridor, a little confused as to what to do now when neither have been cleared for the day to go home.

“I suppose I could just go,” James says, making sure Emma is secure against his chest again, strapped safe and snug. “Make sure she gets something to eat and a nap before she goes nuclear.”

Q is caught off-guard by the dismay that sunders him. He doesn’t want them to go. No - he wants to go with them, and with an intensity that nearly directs him back into M’s office to hurl himself upon the man’s mercy and ask if he, too, can take leave. Clearing his throat and his thoughts, Q shakes his head a little at himself. The agreement was made that he would stay and James would go.

“Alright, Q?” James asks, seeking his fingers for a squeeze and releasing them again.

“Alright,” he agrees, breathing through the ache that he knows will ease. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it? How quickly we grow attached. Will you be okay with her?”

“If I could manage her with no supplies or paperwork from Peru to London, I’m fairly sure I can manage her back across the city.”

“Right,” Q agrees. “I just need to get my head on straight. It’s been - we’ve had quite a couple of days. That’s all.”

James nods, and leans in to kiss Q on the forehead before he can protest. There are few enough people out to see, though James understands the need for discretion. Another kiss held longer and James pulls away. When Q leans in to kiss Emma goodbye she squeals and squirms.

“I’ll call from home.”

“Good. Alright.”

“And I will see you -”

“Five,” Q tells him. “When the office closes.”

“Five.”

“Yes.”

James’ lips work but he refrains from smiling. He can’t remember a single day that he has known Q that he has gone home on time. It warms him more than he can say. Instead he nods, lifts a hand in parting, and makes his way down the corridor to the car.

It’s nearing three o’clock when a call comes through for Q. It doesn’t come through the landline, nor any of his three cellphones. It comes, instead, through the little window he keeps open on his homescreen on the computer. It comes, too, as a surprise, as never once since he has installed them, have the cats turned on the cameras and microphones on their own. With a frown, Q tilts the screen down further to keep it hidden, puts his headphones in and takes the call.

On screen comes the grinning face of his partner, looking as though he has just woken up. He waves, once, and whoops in delight.

“Hello darling,” he tells him.

“You’ve managed to turn on the camera,” Q says brightly. “Without breaking it.”

“Even a broken clock’s right twice a day. How’s work?”

“Busy. Terribly busy. It was meant to be a quiet week, debriefing after your return, reviewing damages - from when the clock is wrong the rest of the day,” he adds, nose wrinkling in amusement. “But 009 goes out next week so I’ve got to catch up on what that team’s been doing, meeting with him in an hour…” He trails off, shaking his head. “God, it’s going to be miserable remembering not to tell you these things. How are you?”

“I just took a two hour nap.”

“Lucky sod. Did you eat?”

“A deliciously greasy burger and an entire side of chips. I’m off diet for four months and I plan on enjoying the first two entirely before I have to spend the last two - what was it you said?”

“Reviewing the damages,” Q grins, snorting a laugh. A sleek black form crosses the camera and James draws Peter away from its lens, into his lap instead. “Hello, Peter. Show-off. Are they coming around a bit? How’s Emma?”

“The cats have been surveying the terrain all day, with her in here. Peter was the first into the fray.”

“And?”

“And she scared him off a few times with shrieks, but she learned how to pet him gently, like her owl, when I held him near.”

There is a fussy but happy sound from behind him and James turns to look, stroking behind Peter’s ears almost without thinking about it until the sleek little cat is near vibrating in happiness.

“Hold on,” James says, sending another grin to Q before leaving the screen entirely. It’s the camera that Q had set on the dresser so he could see the cats on the bed more clearly. It hadn’t occurred to him that it could be used in other ways. The fact that it has occurred to James warms his heart. He sits patiently and listens to the sounds of his house - suddenly much busier and a little louder - fill the microphone with white noise.

“Here we are,” James says, returning with Emma in his lap. “Here’s mischief.”

Peter sits near, sniffing aloof but interested. Desmond lies in the back, no sign of response but for the twitching of his tail. Emma looks up at James above her as pudgy legs give way to sit, and Q swears his heart seizes to a full stop when James kisses the top of her head.

For all his ferocity in the field, for his skill as a soldier and how astoundingly he wields his abilities; for his exquisite passion and sense of romance; for all the times and manners in which Q has seen him and wondered at his beauty, he’s hard pressed to think of a moment in which he’s been lovelier than right now. Dark circles beneath his eyes, the lines on his face a little long. His smile wide and effortless and the joy in his eyes unburdened.

He’s extraordinary. They both are.

“Hello sweetheart,” Q says, blinking wide as Emma’s eyes widen, too. She makes a little sound of surprise, and Q hides his grin behind his hand. “Are you being good for daddy? Letting him sleep and spitting up on him only a little?”

“Twice,” Bond says. “But I’ve already put the wash in so you needn’t when you’re home.”

“You’re incredible.”

Emma makes another delighted sound, eyes seeking everywhere, sometimes over the camera, sometimes past it, looking for Q. Just two days and already she responds to his voice as he does James’ - curious and enthusiastic and happy. James points to the little screen and Emma leans in to look, reaching with spit-slippery fingers to draw over it as she gurgles.

“She seems to love laying on her belly in the sun,” James says. “We did that when we got home, partly so the cats could take their time coming near, partly so I could start to make something to eat without her plastered to my chest or hip. She’s also not averse to the sound system.”

“What kind of music?”

“Was it music that you last had on the sound system?” James asks him, tone turning to suggest that it certainly wasn’t. Q thinks and frowns, unsure. James shrugs. “Your creepy frequencies. You two will definitely get along.” He bounces Emma on his knees a little, gently, and holds her hands when she reaches out to grasp his fingers.

There’s smudges on the lens now, blurring them, but Q couldn’t care less. He laughs against the side of his hand, smiling so hard his face hurts from it. “007, are you making your daughter listen to numbers stations?”

“She’s not got a one-time pad so she’s not at risk of deciphering them.”

“You’ll give her a complex before she’s even a year old. Her first words will be numbers and she’ll be humming the Lincolnshire Poacher.”

“Just like her daddy in his sleep, when he’s had too much tea doing research,” James says, and Q’s chair squeaks, betraying the little wriggle of pleasure that twists through him at the words. “She turned over three times in a row.”

“Three times!”

“Rolling for cover,” he agrees. “Or off of it, anyway. I had to put down a second blanket on the floor.”

Q smiles wide as Emma claps her hands against the desk and shrieks a laugh. “Pure trouble, this one. How are you feeling?”

“Exhausted,” James admits. “I know I slept more than you managed to but… this isn’t autopilot for me. Staying up for forty hours with a sniper rifle? That, I’m used to. Keeping an eye on a rolling four month-old? That requires parts of my brain to work that never have, I fear.”

“Have you baby-proofed the house?”

“Not yet. We’re a little too small to reach anything just yet, and I thought we would see which wouldn’t interfere with the cats so much. I have moved anything cord-like from the floor, though. Some of your study may need to be set up a different way.”

“We can work on it,” Q agrees, still watching Emma gently slap her hands against the desk, though her bottom lip is between her gums and she’s curiously looking around her. She has a little bib on now, with stars and moons on it, which James adjusts gently as she turns her head further and her entire body follows suit, not yet used to coordination.

“We miss you,” James tells him. “Very, very much.”

“It’s only been a few hours,” says Q, turning the backs of his fingers against his blush-warmed cheeks. “Only a few days for her, total.”

“But she knows you. She knows your voice. Woah now,” he laughs, as she imbalances and he wraps an arm snug around her middle. “Settle down, trouble-maker.”

“Three days,” Q sighs, in disbelief. “That’s... 2.5% of her life already.”

“A little more each day.”

“I miss you,” he finally says, the words he’s stoically tried to keep back and can’t anymore. “It’s silly, I know it is. All of this is absurd but there’s hardly been a moment today when I’ve not thought of you two. Bloody distractions,” he adds fondly. “Should I bring home take-away for dinner?”

James leans into the camera and grins. “I made dinner.”

“You spoil me.”

“I might make dessert, if Emma decides to have another nap,” James adds, laughing when Emma fusses against him and squirms with joy in his hold. Peter slinks near again and with another shriek of joy that startles the feline off, Emma reaches for him. “Or I might take a nap, when she does,” James admits with a laugh.

“Perhaps steal the cats away.”

“For their own peace and comfort? I couldn’t agree more,” James tells him. He watches Q a moment on the little screen, leaning in enough to wipe the smudges from it with his thumb. Then he kisses into mid-air and smiles. “I love you. Come home soon, please.”

Q sits a little more upright, a shiver tickling down his spine. The affection, the genuine sweetness - it came in bits and bursts before but rarely so effusive. Had it simply been described to Q, he’s certain he’d have snorted at the prospect. To see James like this now, to hear such open warmth and see it in his eyes… Q wonders at how he loves him even more than he did before.

He wants to be home, to share dinner with him and Emma. He wants to be home, to watch her roll herself over and take turns giving attention to the cats. He wants to be home and he wants to kiss James and he wants to press against him and feel this newfound facet of their fondness burn bright beneath their skin.

“Soon,” he promises with a smile, and a little wave to Emma, who isn’t at all watching. “I love you, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Dozens of missions, Q. Dozens, on assignments stretching across the world, with thousands of lives, infrastructures, and devastating consequences for failure on the line,” he muses. “And never once have I seen you so shaken.”_
> 
> _“Get the bloody door,” he mutters._

“You’re jiggling.”

Q blinks, eyes darting to James, then to his leg. He forces his heel to the ground, but after a minute passes, he’s vibrating again. Fingers folded tightly between his knees, he shakes his head but doesn’t give voice to the debate raging in his head.

“Q.”

“Sorry,” he sighs, splaying his hands against his thighs to dry his palms and pushing to stand. “Should I put on tea?”

“There’s already tea,” Bond reminds him gently, and Q observes the cups and kettle, the little bags and cubes of sugar, as if he’s never seen them before. Bond doesn’t stand after him but instead snares his fingers before his quartermaster can pace away again. He presses a kiss to them, and speaks into his hand. “It’s going to be fine.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“It will be,” James says. “I promise.”

“I wish I hadn’t taken you to meet them,” Q declares suddenly. “If you hadn’t met them already, I could simply say that she’s yours from a previous relationship, and it would only seem a little torrid rather than entirely questionable. I could introduce you all at once. I wish you hadn’t met them already.”

James sighs, reeling Q in until his unsteady, skinny little deer legs give nervous way to collapse, dropping heavy into Bond’s lap. He shakes his head and tries to squirm away. Bond holds him closer, arms secured around his waist.

“They’re going to be here any minute,” Q whispers, dire. “And I still don’t know what to tell them.”

“Tell them the truth.”

Q laughs loudly, and quickly shoves his fist against his lips to mute it. Emma’s sleeping soundly, a blessed midday nap, and the last thing they need is to be mid-fit when Q’s parents arrive. “The truth,” he asks, eyes wide. “I just - tell them. Everything.”

“M’s children know he works at MI6. Most people’s parents do, even if they can’t discuss the work itself. In that bloody great building on Vauxhall, it’s not exactly a secret that we exist, darling.”

With a desolate sigh, and a hiccup, Q bites his bottom lip and sullenly declares, “I’m going to be sick.”

James kisses the side of his face and holds his lips there until Q lets out a breath again, trembling though it is.

“You won’t,” James assures him. “You won’t, because they will be proud of you, and delighted by their grandchild.”

“Not yet officially -”

“Two weeks,” James reminds him, “and three more signatures and she has all her legal paperwork, and is legally ours. And that is something they needn’t know, so put that out of your mind.”

Q nods, allowing himself to sift through information and sort it in a different way. At least part of the tension leaves him, and James squeezes him gently around the middle.

“Tell them only what they ask,” he offers. “Clarify anything that is hard to understand, and tell the truth. They love you, they have through everything else you’ve told them, and they will through this.”

Q draws a breath, long and steady, to settle his pulse. This will be fine. Everything will be fine. His parents will understand and although they’re bound to be surprised, he’s sure they’ll...

His stabilizing breath cuts short in his throat when the doorbell rings, and Q coughs violently. He slips from James’ lap and tries to muffle the sound against his hand, scrambling to stand. Bond rises smoothly, regarding his quartermaster with amusement.

“Dozens of missions, Q. Dozens, on assignments stretching across the world, with thousands of lives, infrastructures, and devastating consequences for failure on the line,” he muses. “And never once have I seen you so shaken.”

“Get the bloody door,” he mutters.

James kisses him as he passes, and affects a deliberate swagger as he goes to the door, just to hear Q laugh behind him. He opens it with a smile, leaning in for a hug with Amelia, holding his hand out to Edward who takes it with a smile of his own. Q watches how well his partner gets along with his parents. It’s never a pretence, he’s never an artificial adjustment of who James is; he is himself here, he is gracious and funny and dry, he is clever and tactful. He is happy.

And his parents respond in kind.

“Is my son hiding with his cats again?” Amelia asks, amused, as she and Edward are guided through the door and James takes their coats. “He is wont to do that, silly boy. Quinlan? Come say hello to your mother.”

“Coming,” he says, righting himself quickly from the couch and striding closer. For as natural as James is with Quinn’s parents, Quinn himself is far from it. He offers his mother his hand, then laughs high and nervous as she regards him wry. They manage a hug, clumsy and quick, before he turns to his father to hug him too, before adjusting to a proper handshake when his father makes a gruff sound of mild alarm.

“Quinlan, are you alright?” Amelia asks, and he takes a step back to let them see his smile that is certainly genuine and not at all entirely forced.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. Absolutely fine. I was just making tea. Do come in?”

“Do we get to take our coats off?” Edward asks, a little wry, and Q blinks.

“Yes, of course.”

James gives him a smile and takes the last coat handed him to hang it up. The door is closed, the cats make their appearance, and for a moment everything is back to normal again. Though he would never admit it, Edward fusses with Desmond when he comes by for attention, and Amelia steps by to follow Quinn into the kitchen and through to the living room.

“So,” she says. “What news do you have for us, darling?”

“News?” Quinn hopes his voice isn’t as high as he thinks it sounds.

“News,” Amelia repeats, laughing. “You rarely call us for tea without a reason. Of course we would be happy to come and see you whenever you invited us, dear, if you invited us more often.”

“That’s on me, Amelia,” James says, stepping in to save his partner from another squeaky attempt at a reply. “I come home far too tired to cook, and I refuse to have you come by without a proper reception.”

“Nonsense,” she tells him with a smile. “That’s exactly when you should have us over. I miss having people to cook for. Edward is content with a sandwich and his tea, and insists I not make a fuss about it.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Bond allows, inclining his head politely, and with a little wink, too.

He settles to the arm of the chair onto which Q has dropped himself, hands braced against his knees. He’s jiggling again, one leg twitching rapid, but he manages a reasonable facsimile of a smile as they sort out tea. It’s too formal. It isn’t formal enough. He wonders if he excused himself to the restroom, if he might then be able to wriggle through the window and slide down the drainage pipe alongside to escape.

Edward regards his son with polite, peripheral interest. He’s careful not to watch him for too long. Careful not to let his expression shift as he sips his tea. Quinn is eminently grateful for his propriety, aloof and distant, but never detached. It’s precisely the carriage that Q has adopted in his professional life. It’s precisely the carriage that he cannot manifest now when he feels on the brink of a catastrophic collapse.

“Is it bad news?” Amelia asks, pressing gently.

“I didn’t say I had news,” answers Q, instinctively.

“But you do,” she coaxes. “You’re white as a sheet, dear.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” James assures him. Q levels a quick look on him, gaze narrowed.

“You’re not unwell, I hope.”

“I’m not ill,” he says.

“Let go from the bank?”

“No.”

“And James seems healthy,” Edward adds.

“Everyone is healthy,” exclaims Quinn, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, as much to keep from fainting outright as to brace himself if he does. “Everyone’s healthy. But I don’t -” He sucks his lips between his teeth, but then - wary he’s going to fall into a fit and bite them off - he releases them. “There’s a few things I felt I should clarify. And some news. Clarity, and news.”

“Alright,” Edward moves to mirror his son’s position, and James leans back, to counter it. Relaxed where Q is damn near shaking apart. He wonders, for a moment, how he would have come out to his parents with this sort of information. Once in a while the thought sticks and clings and he considers scenarios he would never have considered before. He has little to go on, regarding his parents’ responses; the last he got from them was a squeeze to his shoulder from his father, when he managed to shoot all the jars from the fence after Kincaid taught him to use the rifle. He knows they were kind, he knows little else.

Blinking himself back to the now, he hopes that Emma wakes and makes her presence known, before her father shakes himself apart and is unable to make it known for her.

“News first, perhaps?” Amelia coaxes. “You rarely have bad news for us, dear, and if everyone is healthy -”

“Honestly, it - it sort of all fits together,” Q says. He reaches for his tea, leaning forward rather than standing, and nearly slips from his seat. Grasping cup and saucer, he brings them rattling back to his lap. “The news and the clarification, but - I - James and I have -”

There is a single note, held long, that cuts through his words and carries through the house. A little breath hitches, and another wail sounds like an air raid klaxon, shuddering to a tearful stop and then revving once more. The elder Holts’ eyes widen as Emma’s fitful crying fills the now gaping silence between them, and Q chokes down a bitter uprising of nausea.

“You have a granddaughter,” he says, with a helpless laugh.

“A -” Amelia blinks, her lips parted and mouth open. Edward, for once, looks just the same, stiff upper lip forgotten in the wake of this genuinely surprising and unexpected news. “A granddaughter?”

James laughs, a soft breath of a thing, and squeezes Q’s shoulder before pushing to stand up and get Emma. Quinn sits still, eyes in the middle distance before he blinks and regards his parents. In the other room, Emma’s wailing quiets to little hiccups as James’ voice murmurs something soothing to her. The wailing becomes a gurgle, becomes a giggle, and James’ laugh warms a chord beneath it to something lovely.

When his footsteps approach the living room again, every single member of the Holt family looks up. Emma is still waking up, little hands clumsily wiping at her eyes as she yawns and clings to James with her free hand.

“Amelia,” James says. “Edward. This is Emma.”

Setting her tea to the table, and with measured movements skillfully restrained considering the bomb that’s just gone off, Amelia stands slowly. She gives Quinn an inscrutable look but turns back to Emma a moment later. She lifts a hand, hesitant, and then settles it to the baby’s head.

“Quinlan,” Edward says, and something in his tone that isn’t clear to James pulls Q’s spine straighter. “Explain yourself, please.”

“She isn’t mine,” he says. “I mean, I’m - I’m helping, and she - you know, she lives here with us -”

“If she isn’t yours, then where did she come from?”

“I only mean that - I’m, you know. I’m not like that. Or, I am like that, but not… the other way. I couldn’t have made her if I tried,” Q rattles on, desperately seeking footing that slips away with every stupid word that stumbles from his lips.

“What big ears you have, little one,” Amelia coos softly. “How sweet you are.”

Emma giggles and turns her head against James’ chest shyly. James hushes her and strokes her forehead until she makes a contented little warbling sound and turns to look at Amelia again.

“She’s biologically my daughter,” James says, eyes down to Emma as she slowly reaches a spit-slippery hand to touch against Amelia’s finger. “Before I met your son, there was another person in my life, and she didn’t inform me of the fact that Emma was on the way. Neither Quinn nor I had any idea until she came into our lives a few months ago.”

There is silence, as the news is processed, and Emma tugs experimentally against Amelia’s hand, smiling when she’s petted gently with the other. James holds her familiar and secure weight against himself and lifts his eyes to Q, seeking permission to go on. With a soft nod, he’s given it.

“The news ties in with the need for clarification Quinn mentioned earlier,” James says. “Clarification now due to classification earlier. Neither your son nor I work in finance.”

“Then where do you work?” Edward asks, brows furrowing as Q’s so often do when something at the Branch malfunctions. 

“Vauxhall,” Q replies softly.

His father’s brow creases more. “You work at a tube station?”

“No,” he says, managing a laugh. It’s weak, but losing the nervy pitch of before. Q finds that he’s suddenly exhausted, and so it’s a little easier for him to say simply, “We work for the Secret Intelligence Service. MI6.”

Edward curses softly, and not a particularly offensive curse, but it’s the first time in Quinn’s memory that he can remember hearing him do so. Amelia looks from James to her son, back again, and then back to Quinn once more. Her hand remains still against Emma’s back.

“For how long?”

“Years,” he says with a shrug. “Recruited at university. Went to them straight after.”

“How many years did I tell you, Amelia,” Edward says, “that the boy doesn’t know a lick about finance?”

“Many,” she agrees. “And so you -”

“We met there,” Quinn says, folding his hands together, then opening them again, palms up. He glances to James, fleeting, but offers him a small smile.

“But what do you do?”

At this, Q can’t help but laugh. “That, I really can’t tell you. Engineering, mostly. I can’t say much more than that, for your own safety, honestly.”

“So you stay in London,” Edward confirms. “You stay safe behind a desk in London,”

“Yes,” James tells them. It’s true to a point, and one exception is one too many for a day like today. “Your son is the youngest and most proficient handler that the Service has. He has no reason to leave the office, but he is victim to late hours.”

“Handler,” Amelia repeats. Her tone is almost dazed, there is a pale blush against her cheeks that James recognizes, having seen it on her son. She’s relieved. She is so relieved she can barely voice it. After a moment, Amelia blinks and looks at James, who offers a gentle smile to her unasked question.

“My work takes me outside of the office often,” he says. “Quinn is the voice that keeps me sane.”

“My goodness,” Amelia exclaims beneath her breath, seeking for the sofa again and settling slowly. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Quinlan.”

“So you’re George Smiley,” Edward continues, undaunted by these revelations - indeed, extremely interested now. Q shrugs a little, wavering his hand dubiously, and Edward points to James. “And you’re Esterhase.”

“More a Guillam, if we’re talking tinkers and tailors,” Bond answers with a sly smile.

“I’ll be damned,” Quinn’s father responds, eyes wide.

Amelia lifts a hand, a little pale herself now. “Not around the baby, Edward.”

“But it’s - it’s good,” Q says. “I mean, it was a surprise to all of us, of course. Emma, I mean, not the work, though I suppose at one point that was, too. But we’ve been together for a while now, and we know we work well together in other ways…” He draws a breath, finding - finally - ground beneath his feet and a little more strength to his voice. “She’s a part of him,” he says simply. “And I love him. And the idea of giving her to someone else - I couldn’t live with myself.”

Emma makes herself known again with a little yelp for attention, James soothes her and holds her under her arms so her legs wiggle happily. She is part of him. And Q is the most important thing in his life. If he were not part of Emma’s… James doesn’t think about it. He couldn’t. From the moment he suggested giving Emma away and Q silenced him softly, he knew.

And here they are.

“I’ve been off the field and home with Emma for nearly two months,” James says, smiling when Amelia sighs her relief. “She’s quite a different sort of handful than my usual work.”

“I would think so,” Edward agrees. James watches him watch Emma, and then steps closer to offer her down to be held. Emma’s only retaliation is to kick until she’s settled, and then she happily investigates the faces of the new people in her livingroom. Curious brown eyes that grow darker by the week, and hair that grows more and more copper, she is a delight with large ears and an infectious smile. Edward gently bounces her on his knee and Emma shrieks her delight.

Amelia watches them, her shock easing as Edward speaks in low tones to the baby, laughing once as she grasps for his glasses.

“She keeps trying to eat mine,” Q says. He draws his feet up into the chair beside him, cheek against his folded fingers. The dissipation of tension in the room is as palpable as the passing of a storm. “I hope you’re not very angry with us. No, with me. It was my fault I didn’t say anything.”

“You do love your secrets,” his father allows. “Much as they tend not to be at all, you actually kept this remarkably quiet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Quinlan,” he chides him, with a good-natured tut to his tone.

“You took nearly three years to tell us that you preferred boys to girls,” his mother says. “As if we’d not known it since you first came back from boarding school.”

Q blinks. “You didn’t. I mean, I didn’t -”

“No, you didn’t. Not for years, but we knew - or suspected, at any rate. I imagine it’s a relief to - to your workplace,” she says carefully, “that you do stay at a desk. It’s a little obvious when you’re keeping a secret, love. I’d hate to imagine knowing something of national security and you unable to stop jostling your leg about it.”

With a snort, Q laughs, looking at her with genuine surprise and a little dismay. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s pretty bad,” James tells him, but winks when Q narrows his eyes at him. Without another word, James passes them all to go to the kitchen and retrieve the tea he left brewing there. He listens to Q’s family talking about Emma, talking to her. He listens to his daughter reply in shrill squeals and mumbled vowels to everything they say.

He had so worried, when she was left to him, that she would be damaged by her experiences. She had not come to James abused or hurt, but she had come to him crying, reaching for her mother who had merely walked away. He knows that children know their mothers by scent, and he had panicked that Emma would never stop crying, when her mother didn’t return. But she had curled against him, against his chest, and slept that first night soundly. And then the next, and the next. They had found their own language, father and daughter, from the circumstances given them. Now he cannot imagine life without her, so used to it as he is now.

He brings the tea back and finds Emma in Amelia’s lap, wiggling all her limbs as Amelia gently tickles her tummy. Quinn crouches beside her, stroking Emma’s hair. He looks happy, he looks exhausted and worn down, but he is happy. His entire family is here, talking together, meeting and getting to know each other. Considering their work, this is damn near miraculous.

James sets the tray down and remains bent, watching Emma coo and blow bubbles between her lips, accepting the soft words and gentle hands that are offered to her to touch and suck against and tug at. His earlier fears seem so distant now. This is a child with more family than in those dire nights he ever realized.

Quinn settles to his hip, an arm on the couch and his cheek against it, watching his mother and Emma play. “We have so many questions,” he says, with a tired laugh. “I should have called you straightaway. She spent the first night dangling in a coat from the closet door.”

“No,” Amelia exclaims softly. James smiles a bit and settles to Q’s vacated chair.

“Oh yes. And she wore undershirts knotted up for nappies and I had something of a nervous breakdown over a plush owl.”

“Tough girl,” Edward decides. “Little bit of Spartan accomodations never hurt a child. Except the actual Spartan ones, of course.”

Quinn lets his finger be gummed, drooled on, squeezed in a little fist. Emma wobbles her gaze toward him and shrieks a happy laugh, kicking her feet. “I’ll have to find some of my books,” Amelia says. Q hasn’t the heart to tell her he’s got dozens - plural - of them stacked all over his desk. “I found it more intuitive than one would think. When you cried, I’d check that you were clean, and try feeding you. If you wouldn’t take it after a while, one of us would walk with you until you settled again.”

“We’re not off to a bad start, then,” Bond muses.

Edward takes up Desmond in lieu of his surprising new granddaughter, as Q and his mother converse at length about milestones and things to keep an eye on. Q’s father watches them for a moment, and leans a little nearer to James. “You didn’t seem like the banking sort,” he confides. His interest is genuine, his curiosity piqued with true intrigue and a glint in his eye. “That is to say, Quinlan doesn’t either, but not at all in the same way. It’s dangerous work, then, is it?”

“Enough that the cliches regarding us keeping our secrets to the grave are true,” James tells him with a smile. “Seven years in the field is a legacy at this point.”

Edward nods, but he doesn’t press for more, for which James is grateful. When he opens his mouth to ask something else, he is mercifully interrupted by Amelia, passing Emma over to her husband for introductions. He lets Desmond go, who only goes so far as to let Emma be set down before returning to within reach of her little hands.

“Goodness, she does have rather magnificent ears,” Edward says, and both Q and James snort into their hands, eyes on their child. Emma is growing sleepy but not fussy, her movements have slowed from their delighted jerking to more gentle things. She mumbles in vowels now and bites her own lip in lieu of genial shrieks and chewing other’s fingers. “Does she keep you up?”

“Rarely, now,” James says. “She’s quite a good sleeper. Terrible napper.”

“Quinn wasn’t good at naps either,” Amelia says. “Always had something to do, our boy.” She gives Quinn a fond pat on the head, and he grins, blushing a little.

“I’m happy to report then that not too much has changed,” says James, amused. “He had all her furniture put together in a day. He’d improved on it by the next.”

“Better than how he was as a baby,” she confides. “There wasn’t an object in our home he didn’t want to take apart, first just by smashing them. He’d laugh at the noise and the pieces scattering. We kept the telly remote in the microwave so he couldn’t get to it, once we’d replaced it three times over.”

“And then I bumped the machine one day and that was the end of the fourth,” Edward adds. Q snorts laughter against his arm, face turned shyly against the sofa cushion. “Once he started walking, it was all over. Everything had to be put higher and higher until finally we just tucked most of it away.”

“I was born with a curious mind,” Q argues in his defense. He blinks, then. He looks to James. “By the books, she’ll be walking by summer. We’ll have to block off the stairs.”

“And the corners of the furniture,” answers James.

“And take up the rugs so she doesn’t trip. Or lay down more rugs so she falls on something soft. Should we put in carpeting?”

“Cats,” James reminds him, and Q hums. Emma makes a sound similar to it and giggles when they both stop.

“I do hope you won’t look far for a sitter,” Amelia says, giving Quinn a meaningful look before allowing her expression to soften. “Now that we have a grandchild I think our retirement will actually be worthwhile.”

“You may need to fight Eve for that opportunity some days,” Quinn tells her. “Emma seems to have enchanted everyone.”

“It’s the ears,” James says. “Definitely the ears, I am living proof.”

They share a laugh, and Quinn’s nose wrinkles a little as he does. “Definitely the first thing I noticed about you,” he agrees. “Not your reputation, your bravery. Not the suits. It was ‘what bloody big ears he has’,” he laughs, snorting when Amelia prods him.

“No, no,” James intercedes. “I don’t mind at all. The first thing I noticed about Quinlan was that he had spots. I told him so, too.”

“You already sound like an old married couple,” says Edward, holding Emma now against his chest where she naps with little snuffling sounds and a bit of drool. “She’ll surprise you, over and over. Into her late-twenties, if Quinn’s influence has anything over her,” he adds with a slight smile. “But in spite of the circumstances, you both seem well-equipped for this.”

“There’s one of us that feels that way,” Q remarks with a smile.

“James,” Amelia says, rising from the couch. “Would you show me her room?”

James nods, stroking his hand against Emma’s hair as he passes, watching her smack her lips in contentment as he dozes against her grandfather. He takes Amelia through to the once-spare room. Now it’s painted a soft blue, the curtains gossamer and soft. The crib stands by the window but just out of the way of the falling late afternoon rays. She has a dresser, currently covered in her toys, some talcum powder in a little bottle, her bottle and her owl. Her changing table stands at the opposite wall.

It’s a good space, a space she can grow in. Soon, her crib will be a little bed, then a larger one, her dresser used for mirrors and makeup and girly things, if she likes. She will have a table, she will have beanbags and computers and a television, maybe…

“We’re slowly gathering what we need,” James says, letting his fingers gently brush against the animal mobile that hangs over Emma’s crib.

“We spent six months preparing for Quinn,” she says, “and still didn’t feel ready when he arrived. So late in our lives, it was an unlikely surprise for us both, and not one we could fathom taking lightly. Even then, we always felt as if we were playing catch-up. They do grow up so quickly.”

“So we’ve heard,” he smiles. “So we’ve seen, already. She rolls over to her belly now, then to her back. Over and over and over…”

Her hands against the side of the crib, Amelia breathes a note of amusement. She appears content, indeed almost strangely satisfied despite the surprise of it all. But the little furrow lingers until she takes a breath to ask, and for a moment looks and sounds so much like Q that James nearly reaches to set a hand against her back.

“Forgive an old woman being a little slower than she once was,” she says, “but may I ask you something? I intend it with neither offense, nor judgment.”

“Of course,” he says. “Anything, even if it were intended that way.”

She smiles a bit, and it fades, pensive. “Where is her mother?”

James nods, the question expected and almost welcome. He has an answer, he has tried to formulate it in his mind to not speak ill of the woman he had once spent a very pleasurable night with. There is bitterness that he thinks will always be there, but he tries to keep it out of his voice.

“She and I were associates for a very short time in my career,” he says. “Before your son and I began our relationship. We spent a night together and went our separate ways. This last time I was out of the country, I happened to visit the same one in which we had met, and she found me.” James crosses his arms and goes to lean against the wall by the crib. “She gave Emma to me without more than a passing word that she couldn’t and didn’t want to care for her, and I should take responsibility.”

Amelia makes a sound, brows furrowed, but to her credit says nothing.

“I couldn’t leave her in that country, alone, with no one who knew her or would care for her, so I brought her to London. I had, and truly have, no proof that she is mine except an instinct that tugs at me to keep her near. I didn’t intend to put this on your son, but when I suggested we find her a foster, he took her up and told me to think no such thing, and that we would find a way to make it work.”

James smiles, then, warm and pensive, and lifts his eyes to Amelia. “Your son is truly the heart of this relationship, much as he would ardently deny it.”

She inclines her head, in thanks for his honesty and kind words alike. A moment passes for her to process this - this, and everything else with which the afternoon has surprised her. “A heart beats fiercely,” she says, “but it is a tender thing all the same. It will work harder and faster, on and on, until it can’t anymore. It is easily wounded.”

James listens, quietly, to every carefully chosen word and the equally important pauses between.

“The heart needs a body to protect it,” she says with a small smile, “and both require rest to remain strong. I do hope that you’ll reach out to me. He won’t realize he needs to until he’s exhausted himself entirely, and even then his pride takes over. He won’t want to be an imposition. You see how he’s maintained this work secrecy from us for so long.”

“Yes,” he says, a smile in his eyes. “He is as stubborn as he is clever. Moreso, in fact.”

“I’ve no doubt your line of work is thrilling. Harrowing, perhaps, is a more accurate word for the mental images it conjured. But there is more than yourselves to think about now, and a whole new manner of adventure,” she says, and with a deep breath, laughs a single note. “Forgive me. My first hours as a grandmother and I’m already lecturing you. Please, James,” she says, “call us any time. We aren’t far and we want to help, in whatever way you’ll have us.”

“I think both of us want to ensure that you are in Emma’s life as much as you can be,” James tells her, stepping nearer and taking her hand. She squeezes and he squeezes back. “And between you and me, I was hoping to get out of the business entirely. Seven years is a long time, they add up in my line of work. And there are much, much more important things at home for me to care for, here.”

Amelia smiles and nods, and James’ eyes narrow more as his own smile spreads. “I wanted to, several months ago, when Quinn and I moved in together but circumstances forbade it. Now, however, I think it is more and more likely by the day.”

“I trust that you’ll do what’s best, for all involved,” she says, giving him another gentle squeeze before releasing him with a sigh and an easier smile. “And believe me when I say that we’ll support you - all of you - however we can. Thirty years ago I’d not have believed I’d ever say these words, but in my dotage I can scarcely imagine a day better spent than helping change nappies and clean spit-up.”

“You’re hardly in your dotage,” James laughs, “but please don’t let that dissuade you. There is an alarming amount of spit-up on most our clothes now.”

“That,” she says, “I don’t miss. Doing the wash.”

“Every bloody day,” he grins.

“All day!” She laughs, a single snort widening her eyes before she tucks it behind her fingers. “No one tells you that when they’re going on about what a glow you’ve got. The only reason we’ve got that glow is because we’ve just run from the wash to the baby and back again in less than a minute.”

James laughs, comfortable, content with this quiet and honest and loving woman. Amelia laughs again, too, and James can see how Q's eyes wrinkle at the corners like hers do, how the snorts come through when her glee is impossible to contain. She is lovely, too.

“It’s certainly keeping me on my toes. A very welcome workout while I relax from my usual routine.”

“I imagine you miss it?” Amelia asks. James shrugs.

“The adrenaline is addictive. The sense that what I am doing is to protect what is most important to me is addictive. But I would rather be exhausted by Emma than by international agencies.”

There is a fussy sound from the living room and both James and Amelia immediately perk up to listen. They hear Q hush her and take her from his father, murmuring things neither can hear but that soothe her a little. James doesn't realize he's smiling until he notices Amelia watching him. Then he ducks his head, a little embarrassed.

“Shall we see what the fuss is about?” He asks.

When they return downstairs, Edward is just settling into the couch again beside his son. Q cradles Emma in his arm, and takes the newly warmed bottle from his father with a murmur of thanks. Emma’s fussiness quiets to contentment, feeding peaceably, and Q glances towards James and his mother with a smile.

“I didn’t think she’d be hungry again so soon,” he says. “I was sure we’d worked the schedule out right, but she had other ideas.”

“Get used to that,” Amelia remarks warmly, tilting her head to Edward who stands with a lingering look to son and granddaughter alike.

He rests a hand on Q’s shoulder, and leans close to speak softly to him, out of earshot of the rest. Quinn’s cheeks warm and he shakes his head a little, but his smile widens. With a firm squeeze to his shoulder, Edward leaves them to meet Amelia and James at the door.

“We’ll let you get back to it,” he says. “I’d say she’s in good hands. Damn good hands, pardon my language.”

James sees them out, with quiet words and smiling promises to certainly have them over more and more often, to see Emma and to see James and Quinn. He watches them get into their car and drive away before locking the door and returning to Q in the livingroom. Emma’s eyes are gently closed, little lips happily suckling at the bottle. Her hands move alternatively against the soft plastic and over Q’s hands, curling over his fingers to hold on.

James watches them with held breath and genuine awe. Both are entirely lost in the moment and each other, Q murmuring softly to her words James can barely hear, but they’re not for him. He’s just a spectator.

Very slowly he makes his way back and sits on the couch next to Q, leaning in to kiss softly against his throat. “She’ll want a nap after this,” he says.

“She’s not the only one,” Q murmurs, nose wrinkling in pleasure as James kisses his neck again. “What an afternoon.”

“Your father’s fascinated that we’re not at a bank. I could see him warring not to ask more questions.”

“He will,” Q assures him. “Once he gets a bit of tipple in him, he will. Too many spy novels. Do you know what he said to me?”

“Just now?”

Q hums, adjusting his arm a little bit to ease the pins and needles from where Emma rests. “He told me that I was doing the right thing,” he says with a grin, shaking his head. “Being ‘an honorable man’ by helping raise her. Not as though I could’ve done anything else, could I? Giving you the boot would’ve made work especially trying,” he adds, teasing.

“You would have found yourself with a puppy following you, if you had,” James tells him, delighting in kissing Q again. In his arms, Emma hiccups and pulls away from her bottle, smacking her lips and blinking sleepily at them both. James reaches to stroke her hair, her puffy pink cheeks, and gently takes her from Q to burp her while Q cleans the bottle and returns feeling to his arm.

By the time he’s back, James is swaying on the spot, his daughter asleep against his shoulder. He gives Q a wink and moves to put her upstairs to her cot.

This is the best kind of exhausted. It is the most beautiful kind. Both of them will curl together in bed for however long their little girl lets them sleep, and then they will wake and move about the house, entertaining an infant, playing with the cats, working necessary adult things around it all.

It’s perfect. All of it is perfect.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They are managing. They are happy. The baby is asleep and her room is outfitted with countless forms of surveillance to ensure she’s attended even in their absence, a few long strides away. But there have been sacrifices. Willingly made and rarely noticed, they have altered their lives. They have adjusted._
> 
> _They have not had sex in nearly three months._
> 
> _And Q is losing his bloody mind._

They find a rhythm.

They always do.

Whether it’s synchronizing sleep while on assignment or sorting out chores around the house, whether it’s timing movements in the field to correspond with the other’s information, they settle into movements as readily together as blood finds its pulse within the heart. Each needs the other to reach their full capabilities. Each is at their strongest when they move in tandem.

It seems that keeping a child together is not entirely different.

In the first two months together, Q takes mornings while James sleeps. He’s always been an early riser, and Bond the opposite, so it’s no burden for Q to adjust his patterns to Emma’s welcome presence in their lives. He brings her to the bathroom with him, now outfitted with a changing table of Q’s own making, and changes her nappy. She laughs and coos while he brushes his teeth and shaves. She’s his company for breakfast, fed as he nurses his tea and munches on toast, and they share one-sided but amicable conversation.

By the time Q has to leave, Bond is waking to take over.

A quick kiss, conversation if they’ve the time, and then James and Emma watch Q go on his way towards the tube. On days it rains, Emma makes her displeasure watching her daddy walk in it known by yowling about it and wiggling fussily. Afterwards, they return inside.

Both James and Q adamantly decided that she would be exposed to as many intellectual toys and activities as she could be, at such a formative age. Emma has mats with different textures and colors, books with large words that James happily repeats for her over and over while she touches the soft wool of the sheep or the fluffy bunny. She has toys that make sounds and make her laugh, toys that fit shapes into holes of matching shapes.

She has the cats.

After the initial period of time needed to settle, the cats have found this new tiny human very worthy of their attention. Though she is not yet allowed to sleep with them in her crib, when she naps on her mat, Turing will always curl up at her side, the same length as she is when he stretches out. Peter enjoys when Emma tries to catch his tail, allowing her victory once in a while as he cleans himself and flicks it just out of her grip until he lets her catch it. Desmond… Desmond has become her favourite cat completely.

No amount of fur-grabbing or ear-tugging dissuades him from seeking her out. No amount of squeals or shrieks cease his purring. He is the first and only that James has to tsk away from her crib when she’s napping, his paws against the edge and whiskers twitching in interest. More than once they’ve compromised, with Bond on his back in bed, Emma on her belly against him, and Desmond at his side being patted by little fingers.

When Q returns - promptly, now, barring incidents that require him to stay late and can’t be resolved from home - they trade again. A quick kiss shared in passing preludes and concludes their debriefing to the other about their day. Q sheds his jacket and computer bag without removing the device itself, favoring instead the little girl that is almost always so happy to see him. Sometimes she’s not, kicking and squirming and crying for reasons that remain obscure to them, but to their delight she’s a happy baby, an ‘easy’ baby, who revels in the relentless attention given to her by agent and quartermaster alike.

Q sets dinner, whether cooked or take-away, while he feeds her and informs her about the goings-on at MI6. She’s hardly a security hazard, and he reasons that hearing many words helps to form stronger synaptic response to linguistics, so he carries on. James showers while Q tends to Emma; he takes time to himself to sprawl across the bed alone or watch a bit of footy. Only once Q’s managed most of Emma’s mush into her mouth and tidied up the bits that didn’t make it in does he ask James to join them.

They are extraordinarily tired.

They have never been happier.

They take turns putting Emma to bed around seven in the evening, if she isn’t fussy, and if all goes well she sleeps and they sleep until the early strokes of dawn touch the sky just before five. Then she wakes with fussy groans and displeased whines, squirming to try and get out of a dirty nappy and sobbing and crying if Q takes too long to get up to tend her.

More often than not, they manage.

They manage, because they always do.

This evening, when James leave Emma in her crib and pulls his finger away from her little hands without resistance, he finds himself snared around the waist by his partner just outside the door. Carefully he turns in the embrace and holds Q back, nuzzling into his curls.

“Hello,” he whispers.

Q curses. Nothing eloquent, nothing gentle, just a soft and helpless swear followed by a little laugh. He tilts his head towards the kiss that Bond presses against his hair. His fingers splay against his back, fingernails catching in the knit of his jumper.

They are managing. They are happy. The baby is asleep and her room is outfitted with countless forms of surveillance to ensure she’s attended even in their absence, a few long strides away. But there have been sacrifices. Willingly made and rarely noticed, they have altered their lives. They have adjusted.

They have not had sex in nearly three months.

And Q is losing his bloody mind.

He lifts his head and meets Bond’s eyes. A harsh breath passes between their lips and he shakes his head as if to dissuade himself but it does little good. Leaning near enough that their lips brush teasing, Q whispers low, “Bed. Now.”

With a low groan, James lets his eyes close, his lips spread in a smile. He doesn’t nod, he doesn’t need to. He merely takes Q’s hand and backs up towards their room before turning to open the door properly and drag them both inside.

It’s been too long since they’ve had this. Often they’ve had the time and privacy but no energy. Sometimes they’ve had the energy and time but not privacy. Always one factor would be in their way. But not now. Not here. James takes Q’s face in both hands and kisses him, deep and deliberate and slow. He wants him, that hasn’t changed with any passing day of diaper changes and spit-ups and errands. It hasn’t changed and it shan’t; on that James is willing to gamble.

“God, it’s like you read my mind,” James sighs, kissing him again, already intoxicated and addicted to Q’s mouth this way. “It’s been too bloody long.”

“Two months, two weeks, and four days,” Q whispers, fisting his hands in James’ jumper. “Not that I’m counting.”

“No, not at all.”

“Not even a little.”

Q collides with him, a damn near desperate joining of mouths, lips spread wide and tongues tangled, drawing away to suckle the other’s lips or nip softly with their teeth. He pushes against him and Bond staggers back, the bed coming up quick behind his knees. Q drives a leg between James’ own and grinds hard against him.

There is a chance, not insignificant, that they’ll be interrupted. Emma awakens at odd hours for various reasons, or sometimes none at all. As on any assignment, time is of the essence, and neither man in this moment wants to risk the possibility of disruption.

Q jerks James’ jumper off over his head, meeting his mouth again with a contact so insistent it feels bruising. His undershirt follows, and spreading his fingers, Q shoves his hands against Bond’s chest and groans. Soft hair curls against his fingertips, little nipples pebble stiff under his touch.

“God,” he sighs, crude in a way that he’d never have been were they not so changed. “God, James, I fucking need you.”

“How?”

“Don’t fucking care.”

James laughs, but it hardly slows his own hands against Q’s smooth skin, under his shirt that soon finds its way to the floor as well, over his ass to squeeze there and draw a beautiful sound from his partner.

“You,” James decides. “Under me. Tongue, fingers, and spit before I fuck you.”

Q lets loose a moan so genuine, so bloody wanton, that bends against Bond to muffle it against his throat. There he sucks a scarlet mark, dragging his teeth over James’ pulse, fingernails driving pink lines against his chest. Yes, he gasps, because he wants to be told what to do rather than to tell. Yes, he begs, because he wants to feel an ache that lasts for as long as possible now that this has become a rarity rather than regularity.

He slips from atop James and pushes back across the bed, heels rumpling the bedcover beneath as shove by shove he works himself to the center of the mattress. Each push brings his trousers lower, worked open with frantic fingers. He kicks them away and starts to reach for his socks but finds his wrist clasped instead. His other hand seeks for his pants - this one too is held.

Both hands pinned above his head, Q arches upward with knees and belly towards the ceiling, and begs Bond beyond words for all the things he promised.

Though they’ve had little time for actual, genuine, filthy sex - and both crave it more than they would ever admit, feigning civility - the appearance of Emma in their lives has brought them almost back to where they had started. Furtive grasps and hot kisses, laughter and too-quick blowjobs out of the way. It’s actually rather exciting, it’s almost as if they’re reliving their beginnings over again.

A hand settles in Q’s hair and James turns his wrist to tug it, arching Q more. He lets him go, knowing Q won’t move, and drops a hand to stroke against him, already hard in his pants, already a damp spot just beneath the waistband where his cock struggles to pop free.

“I love you,” James whispers, words harsh where they’ve so often gentle, enough that Q shivers at the sound of them. “I’ve fucking ached for this.” He hooks his fingers into Q’s pants and slips them free, allowing him to kick them away before hoisting Q’s legs up against his shoulders and giving him no time to consider or reconsider before pressing a hot kiss between his legs.

Q doesn’t moan - he gasps. A deep and shuddering breath fills his body and arches him up onto his shoulders, as his heels dig hard against Bond’s back. Cock bouncing against his flat belly, made firmer still by the bridge he creates, Q doesn’t dare reach to touch himself. He’d finish in an instant if he did.

Instead, he grasps James’ hair, hard. Silvering stands shorn short snare between his fingers. His nails scrape against James’ scalp. Almost choking down air, Q finally fuels the a moan that spills free, aching high and lovely, as James’ lips encircle his hole and he sucks hard.

Q prefers to be on top. He likes to delegate, to instruct, to see Bond - this beautiful, brave man - bent beneath him. But not now, not at this moment. He wants what they shared in his office, now nearly two years’ past. He wants to be held and moved and used and worshipped. James’ tongue spreads flat against him, spit clicking slick and Bond’s breath hot against his hole. His tongue plunges inside and Q curses against the back of his free hand to keep himself quiet. A thin thread of precome leaves a glistening trail upward over his stomach.

James knows how to play him as one would an instrument. He knows the sounds Q makes and what they herald, he knows when to pull back, when a tension is for pleasure and when it is for endurance, he knows how Q tastes, and smells, and feels, in every possible way. He adores him.

James tongues him long enough to feel those elegant fingers squeeze hard against him, and then he pulls back, just far enough to kiss hot against Q’s hip, just far enough to suck a mark there for Q to touch later and remember and relish in. Keeping his lips parted hot against trembling skin, James slips a finger into his partner, then another, stretching him in only the most primitive way, only enough to not hurt him.

Neither have words, now, though both enjoy talking through sex. They are breathless and tired and giddy from this freedom afforded them. There is a rush that comes with knowing you have little time before something happens, yet not knowing when something will happen. An interruption is inevitable, but when? A cry or a whine? Just gentle shifting that still has them, as new parents, sneaking in to check on Emma though she sleeps soundly on?

James shifts and sets his arms on either side of Q’s head and ducks his head to kiss beneath his jaw with a low sound. One hand seeks down to stroke himself, lining up against Q’s hole before he begins to push in with shallow, teasing thrusts that pull both their voices free against each other.

“Please,” Q begs from Bond, the only word he can manage - the only one that matters. “Please, James. 007, I -”

The breach is harsh, enough to suck their breath from their lungs as if in a vacuum. Eyes hooded, lips parted so near but neither able to close, they watch each other with an inviolable intensity. They need this, both of them. Bond needs the forgiveness that comes with sharing this act together; Q needs to know his importance to the man who now - and always - fills the empty spaces inside of him.

Q wasn’t involved in Emma’s existence. Biologically, she shares nothing with him. But there is a strange validation to share this act - again, now - within the context of their altered existence. Q would never give such undignified needs words but he needs all the same. He needs to feel loved. He needs to feel worthy. He needs to feel like a partner in this way as much as the others. He needs to feel desired and wanted and worthy of a thorough fucking.

James gives him that. Q accepts it.

Keening high and arching hard, Q’s belly presses firm against Bond’s body bearing him down against the mattress. His moans silenced by a harsh kiss, Q curls his fingers over James’ hand that holds them in place. A thread of spit stretches and snaps between their bottom lips as Bond leans back to watch the man beneath him, with another hard buck to press deeper inside.

Q curses, he laughs and bites his lip and shakes his head. Too many emotions at once, a messy tangle of them and this act tightening them into a knot in his chest. He loves him, he wants him, he needs him, and James gives him everything.

They fuck hard and they fuck deep, but despite it being a claiming act it is surprisingly gentle as well. Soft kisses and softer breaths, whispered words between them. James kisses against the dampness on Q's eyelids. Q relishes the shiver he draws from his partner when James lets his hands free and he digs his nails into his agent’s back.

Q feels himself gather, the tightness in his stomach, the heat between his legs. He curses again and James kisses him, turning his head with the force of it and whispering just how hot he finds it that he can bring Q to this so effectively and beautifully and quickly. Q shakes his head but it’s futile. It’s too late, with every thrust that shakes the bed and every gasp that comes shorter than the one before. It’s too late and with twitching fingers Q clasps James’ hand against his own and lets loose a long and aching moan that mirrors the release spilling hot between them.

His seed spatters hot against his stomach, ropes of come unspiralling thick ribbons of white over his skin, James’ skin, catching in downy blonde chest hair and a bead shot against Q’s own throat. Months of wanting, but never the right moment. Months of aching, but never enough energy. It all lets loose with an intensity that warms Q’s cheeks with spontaneous tears when he blinks, laughing, and frees his hands from Bond’s loosening grip to wrap his arms around his neck.

“I love you,” he whispers, and tightens his thighs against James’ sides. “I love you,” he moans, as Bond’s body smacks noisy against his own. “I love you,” he whimpers, as his body is filled again and again by the man he loves, his agent, his lover, his friend, his partner, in this and every other way.

James damn near collapses against him, body still poised and tense with need, determined to take his time for as long as he has it, to bring pleasure to Q, to himself, to share this missed and beautiful thing with the man he loves.

He sets one arm to the bed and curls it around Q's head, pressing his forehead against Q’s to hold near. They share breath and sweet whispers, sticky spit between them when they kiss, as James rolls his entire body to push into Q, taking his time pulling out before he does it again.

They needn't have this to remain together, in love and comfortable as they are, but damn it is good when they can get it. James laughs and kisses Q again, a sloppy and lovely thing.

“I’m going to make a right mess of you,” he promises, his own breath hitching as his climax comes closer and closer. “Will have you limping into work tomorrow, squirming in your chair…”

Q bites his lip and nods, releasing it with a laugh. He has been taken with this man from the moment he saw him, when their words were like that of hissing cats squaring off to assert dominance over the other. He has felt his heart move for him from their first assignment, when against protocol but on instinct alone they worked together towards victory. He has felt his body respond to him every time they’ve brushed near from the museum until now, and still his words raise goosebumps along Q’s skin, and still his kiss is like air to a drowning man.

He loves him beyond reason, logic, or good sense. He loves him beyond measure. He loves him. God, he loves him.

Q grasps James’ hand from beside him and smears a kiss against his palm. His lips part around Bond’s fingers and he suckles them wet, and pushes James’ hand between their bodies. As Bond is proxy for Q when he’s afield, James’ fingers now suffice as substitute for his own and Q presses James’ fingertips against his opening to feel how he’s stretched him. He presses them against Bond’s own cock to feel how hard and thick he is. He presses them inside, to further the stretch, and gasping, make good on Bond’s promise that Q will feel this for days to come.

It is enough to unsettle James’ even rhythm, enough to push uneven his breath. He tenses within Q, pushing deeper until his resolve breaks and he comes, hot and hard, within his partner. He barely makes a sound as his body releases, a weak half-gasp and high whimper. It’s all he can manage. He clings to Q and shivers, trembles, shakes against him.

James knows that when Q goes to work the next day he will ache. He knows that for a few days they will seek this illicit addiction once more before they settle into rhythm and routine again. He knows that come a few days, weeks at most, he will be bending for Q, too, and limping around the house as he plays with their growing child.

He loves it.

He loves him. 

“God, I never want to move again,” James whispers, pressing close to Q.

Q keeps his heels hooked against James’ thighs. Fingers in his hair, he turns their mouths to meet, less urgent now but no less adoring. Soft touches and lingering holds, sweeps of lips and touches of tongue-tips fill with warm breath pressed to the other’s cheek. It’s reasonable to feel as if everything has changed. It’s not entirely wrong, either. But it’s a reassurance to both, that they needed more than they were even aware, to know that they both still have this, no matter how the rest of their lives are altered.

“Don’t move,” Q asks him, smiling, then laughing against James’ mouth. “Don’t move until we have to.”

With a wriggle to settle, James lays heavy against him. Q flinches a little as his cock slides free, but pays no mind to the mess between his thighs or smeared across their bellies. It’s more important now to feel their hearts beat close together, easing to a steady pace. He kisses him - brow and nose and temple and cheek and lips - until sleep begins to make him lax.

They will lay together for several hours, sleeping so soundly that both snore deep and resonant against the other’s cheek. At two, Emma will awaken with a wail that sends them both scrambling for their clothes - Q wincing, grinning at the pain that sings up his backside - to seek her out. Bond will change her and rock her with little traces of songs he remembers from his childhood while Q finally goes to shower. They will trade off again and Q will lay her back to sleep.

They find a rhythm, in this as in every other way.

They always do.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's a bump and a curse and Emma shrieks happy laughter. Q kisses her head. Then he kisses her again, resting his brow against her hair as she wriggles and squirms. Amidst the commotion, staggering half-asleep around a dark room, comes the sound of a chair being dragged out. Bond connects to Q through a little computer he carries, hardly intended for this purpose, but Q's certainly not going to reprimand him about it now._
> 
> _Emma flaps her hand in a clumsy baby wave when Bond's scruffy, bedraggled smile appears on Q's screen._

Somewhere down the hall, a vacuum cleaner hums. Keys click tentative over the low, thrumming drone. A coffee mug taps back quietly to the table.

Q blinks back to the foreground from the middle, and straightens out of his slouch. Setting his pen between his teeth, he awakens the screen that fell asleep much as he himself. In the last six months, he’s become accustomed to associating anything near silence with sleep, but with Bond not only back from leave but immediately sent afield, Q finds that he misses the daytime clamor of Q Branch.

He takes a sip of coffee, a necessary upgrade from his usual Earl Grey, and he glances sidelong to his companion. Emma stands in her crib, engineered and constructed from scratch by Q, and she gives a big bright laugh when he smiles at her. It took careful negotiation for Q to be allowed to make accommodations for her, with M understandably concerned about what a distraction she would be while he’s working with bloody big firearms and wristwatch grenades and God knows what kinds of radioactive materials. Q promised not to have her there during normal working hours, only after hours as necessary. Q promised to put up a sign on his door when she’s there, and to clear it of any potential explosives beforehand.

Q promised Moneypenny first dibs on babysitting and a particularly expensive bottle of scotch if she’d help bring M around.

“Just a few hours more, love,” he mumbles to Emma, turning back towards his work to click through their monitoring. “Once daddy’s awake and on the train out of Dhaka, we’ll go home.”

“Dada.”

Q’s fingers stop. His pen falls from between his teeth and clinks against the table. He looks back to their little girl, bouncing giddy on her feet before losing her grip. She sits back heavily on her bottom and laughs.

“Emma,” Q asks her, “did you just say ‘Dhaka’?”

“Dada!” Comes the delighted reply as Emma grins and presses her hands together. With a delighted squirm she says it again, and again and again, until Q scrambles close to pick her up and hug her close.

“Holy shit,” he sighs, quietly enough for Emma not to hear, before pulling her back to look at her. She smiles at him, her hair thicker, now, enough to make two absurdly tiny pigtails that stick up every which way. “Clever darling girl,” he tells her, and she grins wider. Her eyes narrow like James’ do when he smiles.

“We’ll call him,” Q decides, sitting down to his chair and keeping Emma on his lap. She can’t reach the keyboard but she happily imitates his typing with joyful slaps against the table. “We’ll call him, right now, he can sleep on the bloody train.”

He makes the connection to James’ personal line and waits. It rings several times before there’s an answer, half-awake and a little grumpy. “Q, what is it?”

“Good morning,” Q tells him, unable to keep the grin from his face. “Did you sleep well?”

“No, I ruddy well did not, and you know that.”

“Dada!” Emma shrieks into the microphone. “Dada, dada!” Childish babble follows that but Q can tell immediately that James heard, that he knows, that he’s lost his sleepiness immediately, forgotten his exhaustion and irritation in light of this.

“Hello mischief,” he tells her softly. “Hello darling.”

“Dada,” Emma gurgles back.

"007," Q says in a rushed whisper, heart riveting against his ribs, "get on visual."

"On it."

There's a bump and a curse and Emma shrieks happy laughter. Q kisses her head. Then he kisses her again, resting his brow against her hair as she wriggles and squirms. Amidst the commotion, staggering half-asleep around a dark room, comes the sound of a chair being dragged out. Bond connects to Q through a little computer he carries, hardly intended for this purpose, but Q's certainly not going to reprimand him about it now.

Emma flaps her hand in a clumsy baby wave when Bond's scruffy, bedraggled smile appears on Q's screen.

"Dada," she says, decisive, slapping her hands on the desk and levering upward to stand. Q keeps his hands on her sides, one foot on each of his legs. She makes a grab for the camera and he tuts, laughing.

"No no, we want to see daddy, don't we? Daddy wants to see Emma, too."

“Look at you,” James tells her, awed as he looks at his daughter. She’s in her little Oxford Uni bicycle onesie, Q’s favourite thing to dress her in. “Beautiful girl, have you been good for your father?”

Emma grins and brings a hand to her face as though shy, watching the screen where her exhausted dad sits still waking up. Behind him, the window overlooking the city is still dark, and Q knows he shouldn’t have woken him - he wouldn’t have - had this not happened. He needs the rest. The train ride shared with his target will be anything but relaxing for him.

“I’m surprised her first word wasn’t ‘wrench’,” James points out, laughing as Q does.

“-ensh,” Emma says.

Q’s eyes widen and he brings the back of his hand against his mouth to muffle a laugh. One of his Branch minions peeks up from his desk, but quickly looks back to his work again just as Q glances towards him. “She’ll be discussing the finer points of concealed weapons engineering in no time," he beams.

"God save us all," Bond smiles, cheek against his hand as he waves back at Emma waving at him. "When did this happen?"

"Just now. I felt guilty asking my parents to stay so late, so I swept home to get her and came right back. It's quiet here anyway and - well," he laughs. "Not without surprises, I suppose. Isn't that right, you little security breach?"

Emma makes another sly gurgling sound and settles back into Q’s lap, chewing her fingers slowly as she watches James wave and smile at her. She smiles back, reaching with her free hand to spread and squeeze her fingers together as she does when she wants to be picked up.

“I miss you so much,” James tells her. “I have so many presents to bring home.”

“You’re on a mission, 007,” Q reminds him, wryly.

“And yet you still have the beads I got you,” James tells him. “I’ve seen you worry them between your fingers.”

“She gave them a jolly good gumming the other day, as well,” Q says, bouncing Emma lightly on his legs. “I tried to tell her that you got me those on our first date, such as it was, but would you believe she hardly paid attention to a word of it? Teething’s driving her a bit out of sorts but I’ve started putting her binky in the freezer and that seems to do the trick for now.”

He looks towards James, bone-tired but showing none of the discontent that has filtered through his voice since leaving. There is a sleepy contentment, and a single crease in his brow betraying the ache Q knows he must feel to be so near home and yet so far away. Q offers him a smile, and for all the world wants nothing more than to hold a kiss against his brow. He doesn’t say it. He won’t. It’s concerning enough for Bond to be so distracted, however reasonably. Q won’t compound the matter by making it worse.

“We’re doing alright, 007,” he says instead, brightening his smile. “Truly.”

“Dada,” adds Emma, squirming fitfully now with a pouty face and a huff, sliding into a gradual flattening on Q’s leg.

“I’ll be home soon, love,” James promises. “I’m going to ride a long train for a long time and then I’ll find a plane and fly right home.” Emma makes a fussy sound of disbelief and James laughs. “I will. Nowhere I want to be but with you and your father. Truly. You ask him, he’ll tell you I can’t lie.”

Emma spreads her spit-slick fingers against Q’s leg and yawns. James lets his eyes slip to Q, then, smiling at him as he asks his daughter if she wants a story. With a babyish mumble she turns in Q’s arms and watches the camera as James speaks. He’d run out of fairytales right quick, so followed stories of his adventures in Thailand and Egypt, Moscow and Jamaica. He tells her nothing of the missions and the danger. He tells her about the monkeys in the marketplace in Morocco, he tells her of the dolphins he saw from the boat in the mediterranean. He talks and talks until Emma’s breathing eases to deep slow breaths and Q stands to return her to bed.

“God, I can’t wait to get home,” James whispers.

Q settles quietly back down to his seat, careful not to let his chair squeak, and as he fixes his glasses, he gives James a smile. "Soon," he promises. "COMINT from this evening confirmed he'll share your train in the morning. All you've got to do is neutralize the target before Chittagong, and hop on the boat from there that'll have you gone. That's it. A few more days."

"After three weeks in bloody Bangladesh."

"Most of which are past now," Q reminds him, gently, smiling softly still.

"Three weeks and missing her first words, Q."

Q sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and works it there, pensive. "You're tired," he finally says. "And homesick. Stiff upper lip for just a little longer - less than 48 hours there, less than 72 until you're here again. And believe me, you can have her all to yourself, and by then she’ll be ready to talk your ear off. All the same word, mind, but…”

James laughs, an exhausted and breathy thing, and nods. “Yeah.” He chews his lip and lets it go with another sigh. “Yeah.” When he lifts his eyes, that melancholy has passed through, he’s eased back into the agent he is in the field. “And you?” He asks Q softly. “How are you?”

Q tilts a little in his chair, back and forth, seeking between his agent's eyes for as long as it takes for the squeeze around his heart to ease again. "We're doing fine," he says, with a sighed laugh. "She'll be happy to see you, but she's hardly starved for attention or affection -"

"You," James says again, not unkindly. "How are you?"

"I miss you," Q confesses, giving up an earnest, rueful smile. "I'm looking forward very much to seeing you again. Touching you. But I'm glad to be here again, you know? I'm glad to be here with you. It would be harrowing had M kept me handling 009's operations instead of yours. At least this way, I can watch you, you know? Out there making us proud."

James ducks his head, humming. "Out here making you curse at me for losing the little camera you sent along."

"That too," Q agrees, grinning. "That's how I know the mission's nearly done. You've hardly anything left of mine to break."

James laughs again, that warm and purring sound Q loves to feel against the back of his neck when they spoon in bed, or watch television together. Q presses the back of his hand to his cheek and James mirrors the motion, gently stroking there as though he’s touching Q’s face.

“One mission, one man and then I can lose sleep while my daughter says the same two words at me, over and over.”

“One word.”

“We’re halfway to wrench, I would say she’ll have that one next fairly quickly.”

“God,” Q laughs. “M won’t let me take her to work after a while, she’ll be reading out codes and classified locations with relish and glee.”

“Britain’s most prestigious agency brought down by a nine month-old.”

“The fate of England left in hands still sticky with banana slices,” Q agrees. “She’ll take us all hostage with demands for cereal, and she’s too cute for any of us to argue.”

James’ smile widens and finally gives way to a low laugh. “Just as I thought I’d met my most wily adversary…”

There’s a hitched, fussy sound. Both men brace. Tiny sniffs and hiccups build breath by breath into a wail, and Q sighs.

“That’s me, then. MI6’s littlest mole needs her nappy changed, and you, 007, need to sleep,” he says. “Two more nights after this. The third you’ll be home.”

“Going to count the hours, Q?”

“It’s rather my job,” he says with a grin. He hesitates, casting a narrow look towards the rest of Q Branch. Assured that no one is watching but the countless cameras that monitor every corner of the place, Q kisses his fingers and holds them to the camera, dropping them away as he moves to stand. “I love you. Do be careful, 007.”

\---

By the time James gets back, Emma has mastered not only dada and wrench - ‘rensh’ - but also cat, car, lee - the telly, Q interprets - and poo, which at once delights Q and makes him blush. 

“I don’t know why that one,” he admits. The rest -”

“Well, she sees it every day,” James reasons, “like the rest.” He bends to take Emma up from her playmat and kisses her soft cheeks until she squirms and giggles against him, demanding in her limited vocabulary and gesticulating to be held tighter. James squeezes and makes a show of how heavy she’s grown, in the three weeks he hasn’t seen her.

She has changed in that time, though he is sure Q doesn’t see it as much as James does. She is bigger, she’s louder and more confident, she’s more coordinated and pickier with things like her food and even her clothes. She clings to one or both of them when they’re near her, determined to keep them there.

“Hold still a moment more,” Q tells him, and Bond obediently lifts his chin. Q daubs ointment against the scabbed split that cuts perpendicular across his lip. He shakes his head. Black eyes from a busted nose, more crooked than before. A battered lip and bruises elsewhere, too. Emma either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, slapping happy against her daddy’s shoulders as he holds her. “How did they let you past medical without stitches?”

“I passed medical,” James says. “I passed by it on my way directly out of the building.”

“What in the h-... heavens,” he corrects, now keenly aware of the little girl who hangs on every word as if it were a sweet for her to savor. “What in heaven’s name happened?”

“Remember how we were counting the hours together? I was far more focused on counting those than the plainclothes in the compartment behind me.”

Q draws a sharp breath, a stern scolding held bitter against his tongue. With enormous effort, he thins his lips and clears his throat to swallow the words. “Poor form,” he says simply, as James hefts Emma up and blows a raspberry against her belly. She shrieks, giggling wild.

“007.”

“Yes, sir.”

Q’s stern expression nearly falters again, seeing James beaten to all hell yet so entirely content to be cuddling their child, making her squeal and wriggle against him. Q sighs and kneels down beside him, scratching softly against Emma’s back when James holds her up.

“You need to be more careful,” he says instead. James settles Emma to his lap and leans in to kiss Q, soft and careful with his cut lip.

“Or I could quit,” he offers softly.

“You’re not serious,” Q asks. “You are serious.”

“Entirely.”

“She won’t be this little forever. She won’t need care all day. She’ll be off to school in a few years, and then -”

“I’ll have missed it,” James says. “All of it. Between preliminaries, operations, debriefings… and for what?”

“Because you’re good at it,” Q shrugs, asserting as best an effort he can beneath the weight of what Bond suggests. “Because you enjoy it, no matter how much you complain. Because you’ll be bored senseless when you’re here and she’s away, and by then you’ll be past mandatory retirement anyway. They won’t take you back.”

“Good,” James replies, smiling. He ducks his head to look at Emma, little hands clutching each one of James’ thumbs as he gently moves them around for her to grip and play with. “Good. Quinn, why do we do the work we do? Why am I so good at what I do? Or was so good.”

“You still are,” Q tells him.

“I was better when I didn’t care,” James tells him. “I was better when I had nothing to come home to but another assignment. M always said that orphans make the best recruits. We have little to live for but our country. I have more, now.”

“I shouldn’t have distracted you.” James’ attention holds on Q a moment too long and Q lifts his fingers, shaking his head in apology. “I only mean that - I don’t know what I mean. It seems such a loss. You’re defending more than just us. So many more people, and families, and -”

“Someone else will gladly step into the role,” he says. “Someone young and cocksure and brave and stupid. Someone unattached. It isn’t because they got the jump on me. That’s happened plenty before. It was why they did. I’ve never been so unfocused before. How couldn’t I be?”

Q doesn’t argue. He barely breathes. Despite his protest, a relief flutters fast as hummingbird wings within his chest, his denial less an attempt to convince James to remain with the service than to ease his own disbelief that James would ever leave it.

“It felt bad this time,” Bond says, pensive even as he shares a smile with the happy baby in his lap, bouncing up and down with seemingly endless energy. “When I stopped them. When I neutralized him. It felt…” He draws a breath, jaw set hard and relaxing slow. “Do you know what I thought, after I’d done it?”

Q shakes his head, glancing to Emma with a smile as she laughs dada over and over.

“I wondered if they had children who would miss them.”

All the air leaves Q at once. Bond isn’t wrong, if what he says is true, and Q doesn’t doubt for a moment that it is. There are few things that constitute a greater risk to their operations than a compromised agent. There are few things that pose a greater threat to their little family than their work. And still Q daren’t allow himself to accept it entirely, dizzied as if the floor has fallen from beneath him to even let himself imagine their lives without the fear whose burden they have borne so long.

“Will you, then?” He asks, scarcely above a whisper.

James lifts his eyes and just looks at him, black eyes swollen a little but still narrowed more in pleasure than pain. There is a stitch stuck covering the top of his nose, his lip is split and still he smiles. And it’s answer enough, it’s simple enough and strong enough that Q doesn’t ask again - he knows.

Emma babbles something and lets go of one of James’ thumbs to reach for Q, as well, bringing them all together. Her two fathers hold her up, secure and supportive and always there, and Emma wiggles in her onesie where she stands.

“Alright, my darling girl,” James says, looking down to her again. “Daddy needs to take a nap. Do you want to take a nap?”

“Nap!” Emma declares, and both James and Q smile wider.

“Yeah, a nap, baby. Come on, we both need one. We all need one. Should we take your father with us?”

To this she bounces once and decides, “Poo.”

“That answers that, then,” Q laughs, as the wrought iron tension in his chest begins to loosen. “Just like your daddy, aren’t you? Leaving me to sort out your messes.”

He stands from his crouch and takes her, lifting her beneath her arms and setting her against his side. He rests his freed hand against James’ cheek. Bond kisses his palm.

“You wash up,” he says. “Take something before you lie down or you’ll wake up puffy and sore.”

“Yes, father.”

“Christ,” groans Q, grinning despite himself. “Don’t you start. Everyone, then, upstairs. James, be sure the cats come along too. We might as well attempt to align the planets for sleep all at once.”

James smiles and whistles sharply, enough to always get Peter out of his stupor. The black cat slinks near and Turing follows, as he always does. There’s a squeaky little chirp from the kitchen announcing Desmond’s imminent arrival to the party as well.

Upstairs, the cats settle as they like on the big bed, the blankets pulled back and pillows tossed aside. James washes his face carefully and takes some pain killers. By the time Q and Emma return, the latter dressed in soft pajamas, James and the cats have made the bed into rather an enviable nest.

“In,” James says. “Everyone in.”

Emma is set to the mattress to crawl her way across, and Q climbs in after, nestling the three of them safe and close in the middle of the bed. Desmond curls up against his back, Turing stretches half over his feet. James doesn’t see Peter, but he knows he’s close, waiting for the first snore before seeking out whatever place on James is most inconvenient for the man.

“My parents will be disappointed,” Q muses. “We’ll have far less need for babysitting if you’re here.”

“Don’t be silly, darling, they’re entirely welcome. I’ll have time to do the wash, then. Make dinner.”

“Sleep.”

“Sleep,” Bond agrees with a laugh, as Emma begins to do something like baby push-ups from the bed in her excitement. “It’s hard for me to even imagine it. The longest I’ve had away is when I’ve been grounded, and that only time to heal up before the next outing. What are you doing, mischief?”

“Not napping,” Q surmises.

“Not napping,” James agrees, bringing up a hand to stroke over Emma’s back in soothing slow rubs until she settles on her stomach and squirms around to curl up like a little worm between them. “There you are, that’s better.”

“‘ap,” Emma says, but her voice is sleepier now, slower and mumbly even in her babblings. She sets a thumb between her teeth and watches James as he continues to stroke her back and over her hair, soothing her and smiling when she looks at him. Q brings his hand up to cup the back of her head and Emma leans back, smile pulling up her lips as both of the men who love her so much hold her safe.

She drops off not moments after.

“God, I think I’m not far from that,” James says, stifling a yawn against the back of his hand. “Promise me something?”

“Hmm?”

“When I nod off, you won’t get up and work on something,” James says. “I know when you leave, you know, I can feel it.”

“You never wake up,” Q points out, amused. 

“Don’t need to be awake, I can feel you move away. Don’t do it.” James’ eyes narrow in amusement.

Q worries his bottom lip between his teeth, squinting. He removes his glasses and sets them to the nightstand. He clears his throat.

“I knew it,” Bond murmurs. “What could be so important?”

“Dinner. Laundry. Tidying up while you’re both unconscious. It’s less work for you to do later if I -”

“I’d rather help,” James says.

“Bond, you’re black and blue.”

“Are you doubting my prowess? After all that about how skilled I still am…”

“Were.”

James clicks his tongue. “That’s harsh, love,” he says, but his smile says something else entirely. “Cruel.” He leans over Emma to kiss Q again, relishing the feeling of him so near, after three weeks away. 

The four months he had spent on leave, here, with Emma, had its moments of boredom. They had moments of anger and exhaustion and upset. But in those four months James felt more like himself than he has ever before. Knowing that his child and his partner were there, safe at home, nearby, that is something he never wants to give up again.

Perhaps it makes him weak, he hardly has the energy to care.

“I love you,” James sighs, settling to the pillow and watching Q through barely open eyes. “I cannot wait to spend years more putting on laundry with you.”

Q snorts and James smiles, running a hand through his warm curls and leaving it there to hold him near. This is where he wants to be.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“My goodness,” Q whispers, his annoyance with the day dissipating in an instant. James takes from him the equipment cases overladen in his arms, and Q looks to him wide-eyed. “She just -”_
> 
> _“Happy to report that double-oh seven and a half has completed her assignment,” he says with a smile._

“Alright double-oh seven and a half, this is an operation of utmost importance.”

Ginger haired, a change from the nebulous dark tufts when they met, her coloring mirrors what Bond can remember of her mother. But her smile, her energy, and yes, her ears - to which she’s growing into, James would argue - are entirely his. Q dressed her that morning before work, in a tiny grey cardigan and cotton trousers patterned with little foxes. Bits of breakfast oatmeal still cling to her clothes.

Emma blinks, and gives a wide smile, all gappy baby teeth and bright pink cheeks.

“I knew you’d accept, Agent Mischief,” Bond intones, eyes narrowing in a smile. “This mission, should you choose to accept it…”

Standing against the couch, her arms over the cushions, Emma hides her face and giggles. Bright brown eyes peek at him and she giggles again.

“Now now, this isn’t the time for cold feet,” he says, seated cross-legged on the rug. “It’s time to use them. Come over here, Emma.”

The cats watch from beneath the living room table, moved safely against the wall. Bond’s not yet changed from what he slept in, but for a pair of flannel pajamas over his pants. Though it’s been only a few months since his sudden - and readily accepted - retirement, it seems a lifetime ago that he dressed in bespoke suits and expensive garments. It’s as if it’s remembering glimpses of someone else’s life, when all that he truly knows is this one.

He’s never been happier.

“Alright,” Bond decides. “I understand. It’s a risky mission, and you want me to sweeten the deal. In exchange for your engagement, what if I were to include…” He reaches behind his back, and produces her beloved plush, smile widening as her eyes grow wide. “...your owl.”

“Hoo,” she tells him softly, and James obediently presses the stomach of the toy to produce just the same sound. Without a word she slips from the couch to sit in front of James, mirroring his position and reaches for her toy, which he gently holds back. Emma regards her father with narrowed eyes of delight and waits.

“Your mission, my terrible daughter,” James tells her, “is one of deceptive simplicity and utmost importance.” James scoots back on his bottom and sits several steps further away. He holds his arms out and beckons Emma near. “You must rescue Hoo before I can take him to the washing machine for a rinse. It is within your power to stop that terrible soapy water soaking into his lovely feathers. Will you do it?”

“Yeah!” Emma grins, shifting to sit on her knees.

“I have all the faith in the world in you, Emma Bond,” James tells her, sending a salute which Emma happily returns. “Take your time.”

She crawls towards him, speedy now in doing so. James executes a smooth shoulder roll across the carpet to escape her grasp and smiles as she laughs. He works back to beside the couch, Hoo still outheld and not imperiled, and she pulls herself up to stand again.

“Well done, Agent Mischief,” he praises her, and she holds out a hand towards him, squeezing her fingers together.

“Dada. Hoo.”

“That’s right. Daddy has Hoo, but Emma could have Hoo, too.” Somewhere far inside himself, the part of Bond that reveled in illicit liaisons, tailored suits and well-blended cocktails cringes. At least there’s nobody but them here to hear it - they, and Q’s omnipresent surveillance equipment, anyway.

Emma makes a fussy sound and scrunches up her brow. There is no other sound to suggest a full-blown tearfest so James doesn’t move nearer. He scrunches his own brow, too, and Emma’s expression warms when she smiles instead. She reaches for Hoo and her father both and makes a sound.

James draws his knees up and taps his feet on the floor, letting his toes grip against the ground and let go again. He watches Emma plonk on her bottom again and imitate him. 

“Just like that,” James tells her, pushing himself to stand, letting Emma imitate that too. “Just like that kiddo. First step is always the hardest.” Emma considers him, watching James lift a foot and set it before himself. She lifts her own and immediately ends up on her bottom. She blinks in surprise and lets out a shrill yell, but doesn’t cry. James huffs a breath of relief. “Let’s try again.”

They find, quickly, that Emma enjoys being walked, she can move her little legs as they need to be moved when she is holding on to James for support. They find, too, that even if it’s just his finger she holds, no weight given him to support, she can walk too. It’s when she holds nothing but air that things get difficult.

At midday they break for juice, Emma from her sippy cup and James from the spare sippy cup. He watches her as she holds Hoo and watches him. “What do you think?” He asks, and Emma shrugs, little lips tugging at the sipper to get more juice. “I think that like any good agent, you need a little bit of high-wire help.”

“Ta!” Emma exclaims. 

“You’re very welcome,” James tells her, finishing his juice as Emma hands him her empty cup. “Let’s get to it.”

They use a piece of woolen string, red and soft and comfortable to hold, and James ties it to Emma’s wrist before he winds a little around her palm for her to hold. He lifts the other end that is in his hand to show her that they’re connected. Hoo sits by the couch to watch.

“Double oh seven-and-a-half,” James announces, “you’re ready to fly.”

They’ve spent many afternoons practicing walking together, with days off between for reading and songs, matching blocks into the right holes and learning new words. They take outings to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens so they can wave at the MI6 building looming beside. Sometimes Q meets them for lunch, when he’s able to get away, always late to return when he does. Sometimes Moneypenny comes instead, always with a treat in hand. Tanner once came down with her and made a jolly good show on the playground catching Emma at the bottom of the slide with Bond above.

Q has marveled at how well she sleeps now at night, out by seven without a peep until he gently wakes her in the morning. Little does he know the rigorous training their little agent undertakes while he’s at work, beneath Special Supervising Handler Daddy. James takes a step back and immediately Emma’s lip wobbles.

“Now, now, none of that, Emma Bond. Just a little step,” he says, taking another back. Her breath hitches, on the precipice of a tantrum, but instead she totters forward once. Then again. Bond blinks. So does she.

Beautiful, stubborn girl. For all the world that he’s seen, Bond’s certain he’s never been so awed as here and now.

Emma makes a weak sound of surprise and takes another step, another, holding the string tight in her little fist as she nears James and topples into his legs with a giggle. Looking up, her eyes wide and still wet from the well-prepared onset of tears, she whispers his Official Title, and grins when James picks her up.

“Atta girl,” he breathes, kissing her cheeks, then her forehead, then many many little kisses against her face until she shrieks laughter and tries to squirm away. “Again?” He asks.

“Again!”

And so again, and again and again. With wobbles and falls and a fair few tears on the way, step by step Emma finds her balance and confidence, tottering after James who walks backwards from her, string trailing on the floor.

When she falls back, he moves in case she needs him, but she just as quickly shoves and pushes her way up again. When she falls forward, he catches her every time. Warm praise and ready encouragement build her confidence quickly, astoundingly, before his eyes.

Sod the missions. Sod the endless operations and assignments. Sod the meager sense of pride he felt staggering home bruised and exhausted and sod the bloody Service. James has never been proud than of this, of her, her fight and her stubbornness and her happy laugh. No one - nothing - else has ever made his heart feel so full with no more than a smile.

No one else but Q, and James only recognizes the quiet tears that slipped unbidden when Emma mashes her hands against his cheeks.

“No,” she says, stern.

“Yes,” he answers with a laugh.

“Dada, no.”

“Dada’s fine,” he assures her, giving her a squeeze until she wriggles free and seeks along the couch for Hoo. She finds Desmond along the way, also a dada for lack of more consonants to put together, and gives him a firm pat. He purrs.

James is just unwinding their string when he hears the keys in the door. Q has doubled their locks, and his keys rattle noisily with so many on his fob. Finally he just rings the bell.

James looks towards the corridor, then to Emma and to the door again.

“Should we go greet your father?” He asks, cocking a grin at his child. “Emma can go right to the door now.”

Emma considers this and gurgles her agreement. Yes, should Emma wish Emma could go to the door now. She looks at James and grins as he grins wider. He reaches for his daughter and sets her to the floor, helping her find her balance before she totters off on her own towards the sound of the doorbell.

James follows with long strides, close enough that if she falls he can catch her, and passing her just quickly enough to manage the locks before she gets to the door. She laughs as he goes, quick and bouncy and entirely on her own strength and balance. 

When he finally gets the door open, Q squints at James for taking so long, but immediately forgets his displeasure when Emma walks quickly into his legs and hugs them, declaring a loud “BAH” followed by an equally loud “DADA”. He blinks down at her. She grabs his pant legs with little fists and rocks happily, exclaiming once more: “BAH.”

“My goodness,” Q whispers, his annoyance with the day dissipating in an instant. James takes from him the equipment cases overladen in his arms, and Q looks to him wide-eyed. “She just -”

“Happy to report that double-oh seven and a half has completed her assignment,” he says with a smile.

“With top marks, no less. Emma,” he laughs. “You have outdone yourself!”

“Ma,” comes her answer, and Q unshoulders his computer bag and sets it on the stoop, with no mind at all for it now.

“Absolutely correct, Emma did this. Can you show me again?”

“Hoo.”

“Let’s go find him, shall we?” Q says. He rests a hand on her head and leans forward, enough that on his toes, and with the heavy black cases between them, he can just touch Bond’s lips with his own. “James,” he sighs, and then he simply laughs.

“I know,” Bond answers with a grin.

“Hoo!” Emma demands again, tugging at his leg with such vigor that did she not have such a hold of him, she’d surely fall. Q gives James a smile, so wide his cheeks ache, and then turns back to her.

James bends to take up Q’s bag and carry his things inward, as Q gives Emma a finger to hold to escort her back from the hallway. Gripping him, she’s quick on her feet, her inertia carrying her nearly head-first as she charges along. Q gently removes his finger from her grasp once they’re in the sitting room, and he takes a step back, picking up Hoo from the couch.

Emma doesn’t hesitate. Giggling wildly, she storms forward after him and once more hurtles herself against his legs, one arm behind his knee, the other hand grasping for her owl. Q gives him a squeeze and she yanks him away. Q discreetly hides a hitched breath against the side of his hand. If he speaks, he’ll cry. He’d blame it on frustration at the office, exhaustion in every form, and both would be a lie but he tries to choke it back all the same. He steps back again and when she stands on her own, walks on her own, seeks him out on her own with a scolding no for walking away again, Q forces his fingers against his eyes and laughs, helpless.

“Bond,” he manages. “She’s remarkable.”

“Of course,” James tells him warmly. “She is yours too, after all.”

The question of biology never comes into this. It needn't. For as much as Q knows his DNA is not within this child, his mannerisms are there, in her smile and giggle and intonation. His cleverness is there, and his damn near blind determination.

She is his.

She’s theirs.

But at this Q does sob, just quietly, and laughs when Emma collides into him again and scolds him just as she had James for crying. A firm pat on the leg and a no, quickly becoming her favorite word. He takes the tiny reprimand as intended and smiles.

Q bends to pick her up and hold her close. He kisses her pink cheeks and her nose, he kisses Hoo when she holds him up and Emma giggles.

“You’re a brilliant agent, double-oh seven and a half. Truly, you are.”

“Yeah!” Emma declares.

He lets her hold Hoo between them, bringing her close for another kiss on the head. In an instant, betrayal. Hoo falls to the floor. Tiny fingers clutch his glasses and - a change from simply gumming them ‘til they’re soppy - Emma smushes them against her face, the wrong way ‘round. Q adjusts her to one arm and with a few little murmurs for patience, helps her get them turned and settled. Bond has heard those soft utterances - bear with me, just be a moment more, only a moment - more times than he recall over comms, as Q worked frantically on his behalf a world away. He’s only a bit nostalgic to hear them now, only a bit, in such happier context.

“There we are. Not quite quartermaster, but close,” he says, as Emma blinks wide-eyed through Q’s lenses. “Eighthmaster.”

“Quinn,” James asks, only when he starts to feel the weight in his shoulders from holding Q’s things. Four boxes of dense black plastic, impact resistant and bullet-proof, and his computer atop. Q blinks at him, then the boxes, and laughs.

“Oh,” he says. “Shall I give you the short version?”

“Can you tell me any other?”

Q considers this a moment, as Emma smears her fingers across his glasses. “No, actually. It’s my homework - figured I’d rather do it here then there since it’s a shot in the dark, anyway. We’ve got images of some new equipment that we’ve never seen before. I have my suspicions as to what it’s for, but I’m going to attempt to build it up from the pictures we’ve got and see if I can’t get a better handle on it.”

“Quinn…”

“It won’t be anything dangerous. I mean, theirs certainly is, but this one’s only a dummy. And if I’m able to replicate it, I’ll not only have confirmed my suspicions before 009 goes out again after it, but I’ll have a mock-up to work from in disarming it -”

“Quinn,” James says again, with a dire laugh. “Where do you want it?”

“Kitchen,” he decides, nose wrinkling. “Fewer cats than on my desk. Closer to the tea.”

 

“You’ve an addiction.”

“Hardly,” Q tells him, narrowing his eyes at Emma who narrows them back, comically enlarged by Q’s lenses. “We have a very healthy and loving relationship, tea and I.”

“Uh-v!” Emma proclaims.

“Yes, darling, love,” James tells her. “What I have for you, and what your father has for tea, apparently.”

Q snorts and shakes his head, and James smiles at him before setting out his things as neatly as possible on the counter. He clears away the fruit bowl and one of Emma’s sippy cups to give him more space to work.

“Next time you come and visit me at work,” Q tells Emma. “We can run around and try to pet the pigeons.”

She squints again, likely an attempt to focus through Q’s particularly strong prescription, but watching Q’s mouth as he speaks. He repeats a few of the words again - run and pet and pigeons - and she focuses so keenly on him that Q’s almost startled by it. He’s read, through countless books that now encompass whole shelves in the sitting room, about how rapidly children acquire language after a certain point. He can all but hear her processors warming as he repeats the words again.

Then, of course, he catches wind of the results of her focus.

“Poo,” she declares, and Q laughs brightly.

“So it is. Well done. James,” he asks, turning to seek the man and starting a little when he’s at his side. He leans up to kiss him, and lets his lips linger a moment more to speak against his mouth. “I’ve got this. You’re off-duty.”

“Don’t you have homework?”

“I don’t mind keeping her with me. And I want to see her walk again,” he says, cheeks warming rosy beneath his eyes as a smile lifts them. “In the car, I brought beer for you. I saw there’s a match on tonight.”

He touches another kiss to the corner of his lips before lowering Emma back to her feet. She grabs his hand and bends to pick up Hoo, and Q’s glasses fall to the floor. He leaves them there and escorts her toward the stairs instead. “Come along then. A bath for you, and then we’re going to work on Emma’s first weapon of mass destruction!”

James watches them go, watches Emma get on all fours to climb the stairs when the little gate is moved for her, scrambling up quick enough that Q has to make the effort to keep up. At the top, the gate there is moved as well, and Emma stands up to totter to the bathroom, Q in tow.

James goes to the car and retrieves the beer, smiling at the thought that Q went by to get him some just so he could enjoy the game on the couch. He will keep it quiet, so Q can work, so he and Emma can talk together as he puts together complex shapes and she gently hammers against them with her little fists or the end of a bundled up screwdriver.

By the time he returns, he can hear the bath running, and Q’s quiet voice murmuring to their daughter, who replies with bright words and babbling of her own. They understand each other, they all do, despite the language barrier that gets smaller and smaller each day. She knows what they say to her, she merely hasn’t the capacity to reply just yet. She is learning exceptionally quickly, picking up words and playing with them, finding the texture books Q and James had gotten her to be less exciting for the pictures and more for the things she’s allowed to pet within.

It occurs to James that their child will start school with possibly three languages, a high level of understanding in both mathematics and physics, and perhaps even an entry level grade in gymnastics or a martial art. It’s the simplest thought, and he could not be prouder.

He cracks open a beer and sets the rest in the refrigerator, once he finds room for it. Once all but barren, it’s now packed with baby food and fresh fruits and vegetables, meals he’s made in what little spare time he has so that they can be quickly reheated - most of which are cut into finger-food cubes. James groans at the taste of his beer as he swallows a sip.

“Bloody sublime,” he murmurs, carrying it with him as he goes to rescue Q’s glasses from the batting paws of Turing and Peter. He sets them with Q’s things in the kitchen and puts the kettle on for him, as there’s a splash and loud laughter from the bath upstairs. The match is just starting by the time he’s allowed himself to settle, long ago having learned to pay little mind to the endless debris of their baby. Books and soft things and articles of clothing, blankets and toys and more.

Q’s managed into a hooded sweatshirt in lieu of his jacket and tie, and he lets Emma lead him back to the living room with patient steps once she’s set safely at the bottom of the stairs. He turns back to set up the bottom fence once more as she lets go of his fingers, but he turns to catch her a moment too late as she barrels on eager legs towards Bond.

James is quick to set his feet to the floor and catch her as she shrieks in joy and holds her arms out. Her hair is still wet, let to dry down to her shoulders where the wet tips of it just barely brush. She’s dressed in one of James’ smallest undershirts, and it’s large enough to sit on her like a dress. Something light and airy to dry in before they settle into pajamas for the night.

“Hello trouble,” he tells her, holding her up above his head as he leans back into the sofa. Emma stretches all her limbs out like a starfish and James easily holds her with both hands. “Were you good for daddy upstairs?”

“Yeah!”

“Yeah?”

“Emma’s good!” She giggles.

“So you tell me,” James replies, lowering her and lifting her again, as though he’s lifting weights. “But are you lying?”

Emma grins and shakes her head, shrieking laughter as James carefully lets her go and catches her just a few inches lower before lifting her again. Clutching her hands against her mouth she babbles syllables together in no particular order. Bond raises a brow, and his daughter again in another baby benchpress.

“A confession,” he intones. “I knew it. You’ve switched sides.”

She shrieks again. Peter slinks from the room.

“Your loyalties compromised in a single bath time. Double-agent Emma, what am I to do with you?” In answer to his own question, he brings her down and blows a raspberry against her belly while Q passes by with a smile to pour tea. She squirms and wriggles but he holds her secure, finally bringing her down to his lap.

“The Service’s cutest security breach,” Q muses. “No one would ever suspect her.”

“That’s what makes her a perfect mark for coercion by the likes of nefarious engineers. Where’s 009 off to?”

Q raises a brow, expression dubious but amused as he returns, dipping his tea. “Classified, I’m afraid.” Bond licks his lips apart as Emma slides to sit beside him on the couch, wriggling until Q comes closer, bringing her Hoo. “China.”

“Him?”

“We were briefing earlier,” he continues, not rising to the bait. “Watching old recordings of you to study faces, figures. No wonder she’s such a menace. Look at you.”

“I bet you were,” Bond grins.

Quinn snorts, hiding his smile against his cup. “I started to think that - maybe after that operation’s done - we could take some time together. My parents could stay the weekend with her, or her with them - probably safer considering the security concerns. And you and I could…” He shrugs a little, a faint guilt creasing his brow now that he’s surfaced his earlier imaginings. “Just some time alone together.”

James drops his head against the back of the couch with a groan. “Finally,” he says. “A date!”

“Shut up.”

“Years I have waited for another date!”

“You’re terrible,” Q laughs, his cheeks warming further. James regards him with a soft look, eyes narrowed and lips just barely tilted. He looks beautiful. He is beautiful. James reaches out to him and smiles further when Q sets the tips of his fingers against the tips of James’.

“I would love a weekend away,” he admits quietly. “We could go somewhere, or just stay in London at the flat.”

“Order bad food,” Q adds.

“Drink bad beer,” James offers. “Have sex on every available surface in lieu of dusting it,”

Q’s jaw falls slack, and then sternly closes again with a meaningful look to Emma, who’s entirely distracted trying to get to Desmond, just out of reach. “Mind,” Q whispers. “She’s a little bug, listening to everything you say.” Emma’s fingers brush against Desmond’s fur and he trills, awakening from sleep.

“And she shouldn’t know that her daddies have sex?” James asks.

“I’d prefer that not be one of the first words added to her vocabulary, no,” laughs Quinn. He turns his fingers against his ruddy cheek and sighs, watching the lot of them with a smile that tilts a little when he settles on Bond. “But yes. That, too. An enormous amount of… that.”

“When?”

“As soon as I’m off for a bit. Another week, at most.”

“With him it’ll be two,” snorts James. “Figures he’d be the one to get in the way of it.”

“You’re terrible,” Q sighs. He bends low to kiss Bond’s brow, stroking his free hand down his cheek. He leans a little closer then and whispers against his ear, “And I want you terribly. Bent beneath me and trembling.”

James groans again, louder, and crosses one leg over the other meaningfully. “Now who’s terrible?” He accuses him softly. He leans in to kiss Q again, on the cheek, against the corner of his mouth, to his lips; lingering and meaningful, teasing and suggestive.

Emma sleeps alone now. Emma has her own room, you know this, you built it for her.

“You have homework,” James reminds him, amused. Q hums and noses against him before pulling back and setting his hands on his hips to regard their daughter, who deliberately yet surprisingly carefully, is working on dragging the large cat into her lap for cuddles.

“Emma darling,” he says, as Desmond lets out a plaintive squeaking mewl that he does not mean at all. Limp as a dishrag, he lets himself be pulled inch by inch into her lap, purring loudly. “Do you want to stay with daddy and watch footy, or do you want to come with - ah, other daddy and build a biological weapon?”

“Ca,” she says. “Dada.”

“Right. Looks like you’re on again, Bond,” Q grins. “Daddy’s girl, isn’t she. I’ll be just there if you want me to take her. I’ll give her some wires to thrash about.”

“Is that safe?”

“They won’t be live wires,” he scoffs, returning with a sigh to his work. “A week,” he promises, over his shoulder.

“Two,” James corrects, and Q knows he’s bloody right.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Q laughs despite himself, tucking his fingers against his mouth - elbow propped against the window - and releasing the long breath he held. His computer’s in the back, just in case. They’ve got an overnight bag despite agreeing to spend the weekend at James’ old flat. He’s brought two phones, and extra chargers._
> 
> _Everything is fine._
> 
> _Everyone will be fine._

Edward hoists Emma higher against his hip and she clings to him with a grin, waving as he does to James and Quinn in the car. She’s been promised a weekend of being spoiled, playing with the much older and less tolerant cats at Grammy and Grampy’s, and that her fathers would be back to pick her up on Monday evening, to have a special dinner together.

Quinn spent far too long telling his father that they would just be in London, if you need anything, and Edward spent just as long repeating to his son that everything would be fine. Now, Q sits in the car and fidgets as James sets the Aston into reverse and backs out of the drive. He waves to Emma until they take the corner, and then he takes a shaky breath.

“I’m overreacting,” he sighs.

“Just because I’m not saying anything,” James tells him, “doesn’t mean that I am minute by minute considering turning the damn car around.” There’s a pause and both of them laugh, James shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. “God, we really need this weekend.”

“What if they can’t reach us?”

“Why wouldn’t they be able to?” Q draws a very deep breath to answer and James hushes him fondly, taking his hand as he settles back into the car he drives altogether too little now. “Darling, they’ll be fine. They have everything they need. They’ve got enough to keep her for a week, actually. She’s got a crib there that she knows…”

“I’m going to be ill.”

“They took care of you,” Bond reminds him. “You turned out alright.”

Q laughs despite himself, tucking his fingers against his mouth - elbow propped against the window - and releasing the long breath he held. His computer’s in the back, just in case. They’ve got an overnight bag despite agreeing to spend the weekend at James’ old flat. He’s brought two phones, and extra chargers.

Everything is fine.

Everyone will be fine.

They’ve managed weekend trysts before and Emma is three now and everything is fine.

And James already catches his eye, as he always does but in a manner in which hasn’t happened for months. He’s not dressed in pajamas and soft jumpers. He’s not dressed solely with a mind for what will be easiest to watch once spattered with cereal flung in a temper tantrum. He’s in a bloody suit, a little more snug than it once was, but sleek black with a steel grey shirt beneath. Collar pressed, silvery tie snug. Cheeks clean-shaven and shoes shined.

He’s every bit the agent with whom Quinn fell in love. But now, he’s so much more.

“I feel traitorous to even say it,” Q admits with a smile, “but I’m so glad that we’re doing this.”

“I think you have just voiced one of the primary parental fears,” James tells him, with a laugh. “And voicing it is understanding it, understanding is appreciating. She is not being abandoned to near-strangers, but her own grandparents, whom she knows. And although I know, I know, that once we arrive in London both of us will check our phones just to see her picture on the background, I also know that we need the time away. We need our time.”

Q nods, squeezing James’ hand. They have not had a quiet day to themselves for almost a year, and it’s extraordinary. As much as both are used to the bustle of their now-busy household, they miss the quiet they used to share. Soft-spoken evenings and quiet nights laying beside the other. The ability to sneak up on the other and drag them laughing to the floor for some delicious spontaneous sex.

Yes. Yes, they need the time.

Emma will be fine.

They will be fine.

“You look lovely,” James tells him, sending Q a look from the corner of his eye before letting his lip lift in a smirk. “You always do in my ties.”

“A four-in-hand,” he notes.

“Instead of the half-Windsor it deserves, yes,” James laughs. “I noticed. Smart-ass.”

Q smooths the dark scarlet tie down against his shirt and sits up a little straighter, pleased. He blinks. His eyes widen.

“Oh, God,” Q whispers.

Only because they’re stopped at a junction does Bond not slam the breaks and wheel back towards Quinn’s parents house. He looks at Q with alarm. “What? What is it? Talk to me, Q.”

“007,” breathes Q. “We can swear now.”

“For fuck’s sake,” comes the immediate response, before they both snort and fall to giggles like children. “I’ve gotten so bloody used to finding the most appropriate syllabic equivalent that I can’t believe I’d forgotten that.”

The lights change and the car moves on, further into the city. It isn’t busy, before the lunch rush and after the early morning commuters. James guides the car along the familiar route to his apartment. Though neither have lived there for a long time, neither have wanted to sell it. They needn’t the money, and it costs them little, owned outright. Sometimes if Q worked too late, he would make his way there instead of braving the tube. Sometimes they would bring things there to store. And now, with Emma, it makes for the perfect getaway.

“Piss,” Q says decisively.

Bond counters. “Shit.”

“Bollocks,” considers Q.

Bond grins. “Cock.”

The word alone tugs a ripple of need down Q’s skinny body, nearly enough to arch him from his seat. Goosebumps prickle across his skin and he laughs against his hand. “Fucking hell,” he sighs. “Say that again.”

“Your cock. My mouth. The moment I get you through the bloody door.”

So much for lunch plans. Q bites his bottom lip and grins, blushing scarlet across the bridge of his nose, heat spreading beneath his eyes. “My cock,” he agrees. He raises a brow. “Your ass.”

“Mmm,” James hums, flexing his fingers against the steering wheel, his expression shows no outward response as Q’s does, but his quartermaster knows him well enough; he sees the tension, the shivers and fidgeting that give away just as much anticipation and need. “After,” James tells him. “I want to taste you again, I’ve been bloody well starved for it.”

He runs a yellow light and ignores the tutting of the man at his side. He shifts, instead, to gently spread his knees as he settles back into his seat and drops one hand from the wheel to stroke his own thigh instead.

“But, you did suggest lunch,” James sighs.

“Don’t you bloody dare.”

Bond laughs, and turns towards their block. The car park is just beneath, but as Bond reaches for the keys, Q catches his hand. Beneath them, the Aston purrs idling. With a wanton glimmer in his eye and a crooked grin - and a glance to make sure there’s no one around - Q brings Bond’s hand to his mouth and kisses his palm. He teases the tip of his tongue against James’ forefinger.

And slowly, with a decadent little whimper, Q licks up the length of it, and draws it between his lips to suck.

“You will ruin me,” James whispers, curling his finger just gently against Q’s lips to tug him nearer and kiss him. With his other hand he turns the car off, and pockets his keys. “If you’re not careful I’ll make you take the stairs.”

“Or I could make you,” Q reminds him, turning to nuzzle against James’ hand.

“You certainly could,” his agent replies, smiling when Q looks at him. They wait a moment more before getting out of the car, taking with them what they will need so they needn’t leave the flat again until absolutely necessary. Then James turns to Q and tilts his head, waiting.

Q holds out his bag and lifts a brow.

With a soft intake of breath, Bond takes it from him and shoulders it with his own.

Q grins, biting his bottom lip, and tilts his head to follow as he turns toward the lift. Every stride seems looser now, more carefree. Though he checks his phone once while they wait, he finds no dire messages or alarms and pockets it again. The entire lift up to Bond’s floor, they’re quiet. It’s a thrilling change from the constant - welcome - noise of their home, a return to days wherein they could say everything with a look and not a word between them.

Quinn leans back against the wall of the lift, shoulders pressed against it and hips arched subtly forward. Bond shoulders their bags higher, and straightens his spine. The lift stops and on an exhale, Q makes a little sound, very low. Bond holds the door for him with a look that nearly melts Quinn to the floor as he passes.

How they manage the door open in such close proximity - Q watching Bond closely, not the keys, and Bond trying to focus on them - is a miracle. The bags drop one by one just inside and as Q’s swept into James’ arms, he flings out a hand to bang the door shut behind them. They collide, moaning mouths and rigid bodies. Quinn stumbles but James snares him tight around the waist and forces his lips apart in a savage kiss.

There is a blissful familiarity in this passion. Months and months of their initial relationship was just this - hot and aching and needy, wanting and clawing for it. James moans again, lower, and though his kiss doesn’t gentle, his movements become less dominant, holding to secure not keep Q still, kissing to give Q the depth and pleasure he seeks from his lips.

“God, I love you,” James breathes. He grasps one of Q’s hands to slide it between his legs and makes a helpless noise when Q squeezes.

“I love you,” Q answers, and he pushes his palm harder against Bond’s groin. His agent snarls low, teeth gritted, and finding his feet, Q steps back with a hand still firmly against James’ trousers. James follows, hands in Q’s wild curls, kissing fiery and reverent over his cheeks and jaw and mouth. “007, can you imagine how I feel watching you in the field when we review tapes? Others in the room, so I couldn’t act on how badly I wanted to touch myself just looking at you that way again.”

“I can be,” Bond murmurs. “For you, I -”

“You still are,” grins Q, nose wrinkling. “You are always that. Which is why it’s so goddamn delicious,” he sighs, catching James by his hair and bringing their mouths together, “that you still answer to the sound of my voice.”

Bond curses breathless. How long has it been since Q’s instructed him like this? Since he’s raised his chin and tone alike, imperious and expectant. Months and months and months.

Too bloody long.

Q sets his fingers to James’ tie, and tugs. Wrapping the fabric around his fist, he lowers his hand to Bond’s belt, loosening it. He unzips his trousers. He slides his hand inside and curls his fingers around his agent’s swollen cock, throbbing thick against his palm.

“007,” whispers Q. “On your knees.”

With a whimper, barely heard, James sinks to his knees as instructed. He watches Q, chin raised not only because his tie tugs it up but because he doesn’t want to look away from him. He doesn’t touch himself, though he desperately wants to. He doesn’t touch Q, though he aches and throbs to taste him again. He parts his lips and sighs, smiling at the man he loves so damn much.

“Quartermaster,” he says, relishing the last word before tucking his bottom lip between his teeth, just the tip of his tongue showing to aid it.

Q needs give no more than a look, eyes darting downward, for Bond to lift his hands. Kissing Quinn’s thighs through his trousers, he unbuckles his belt and zips him open, groaning when Q’s cock twitches stiff against his pants. Bond nuzzles, breath spilling hot against the firm ridge of Quinn’s erection. Every sigh is infused with a moan, each deep breath taking in the scent of sweat and arousal and musky heat that James enjoys now only rarely.

“Do keep up, 007,” Q intones, every bit the posh head boy he once was as he stands above James and twists his tie tighter around his fist. “I’d suggest you get it very damp. You’re the one who’s going to hurt for it if you don’t.”

James just lifts his eyes, bright and light and narrowed. He loves Q in every way but this, this he has ached for. They rarely played this game, though both enjoyed it, and now, with a full weekend before them, no interruption bar the evening call to say hello to their daughter, they have all the time in the world to relearn the rules again.

James reaches with his teeth to slip the waistband of Q’s pants down to free his cock, and he sets his hands to Q’s thighs for balance as he leans in to lick against him. Teasing things, just the tip of his tongue. James takes his time getting the taste of him into his mouth again, he plays long enough that the tie tightens. His lips part immediately and he takes Quinn into his mouth.

He sucks long and slow, a deliberate groan on every push to feel Q shiver with it. He imagines him often, in his public school uniform, straight-shouldered and bossy, perhaps a cane beneath his arm like the control freak he is. It never ceases to bring James to hardness within moments. And it certainly does now.

Q watches rapt as his cock vanishes between Bond’s lips, only to emerge again damp and glistening. He doesn’t relent the hold he keeps on his tie, paying careful mind not to let his pleasure inadvertently choke the man. His man. His agent. His 007. On his knees, he bows his head deeply, and Q’s spine shivers straight as the tip of his cock brushes the back of Bond’s throat. He tilts his hips upward in a gentle thrust, and groans at the soft heave that tightens James’ mouth around him.

“God,” he moans. “The way they talk about you, Bond. A bloody legend in the Service. Charming and clever and devilishly dangerous.”

He sets his free hand beneath Bond’s chin, to raise his eyes, meeting them evenly despite how short his breath has become, how bright his cheeks burn. James hollows his own and suckles firm against the head of Q’s cock, lips made scarlet and flushed.

“I’m certain they think it’s me that goes to my knees for you. That bends and begs and squirms. If they only knew how desperate you are for a good, hard fuck.”

James moans loudly, low and deliberate, and slips a hand between his legs, not to rub but just to hold there, keeping pressure against his aching cock. He has wondered, walking the hallways once their relationship was no longer very secret. He had wondered how many assumed that it was Q pressed into bed and made a mess of, he had wondered how many assumed that James was as cocky in the bedroom as he was in the field.

He had wondered, and had gone home and happily bent for this man, moaned for him, taken everything Q told him to take.

It feels good to be unpredictable. It feels good to have that secret, if no other.

He narrows his eyes and sucks harder, leaning in to take Q deep before returning to just teasing the head of his cock. He’s hardly allowed a taste of it before Q pulls him back by his tie, and spills him to the floor. Quick hands catch Quinn when he lowers atop him, releasing his tie to work open Bond’s buttons, moaning loud against his mouth. They kick and wriggle to lower their trousers, shoes toed off to thud to the floor. Quinn tugs his shirt upward but finds it held fast, and their kiss breaks in confusion.

He tugs again, and it doesn’t give.

With a narrow smile, Q tilts his gaze down to see where Bond’s shirt is caught and the answer is enough to make him nearly come on the spot. Around Bond’s thighs, bands of black like stocking garters. Spanning upward are three suspenders a piece, stretched taut up to his hips, that hold his shirt in place. It’s absurd. Quinn has no idea where he’d ever find such a thing as shirt suspenders.

And when he runs his finger beneath one, the sound Q makes is so fluttering and weak with need that he can scarcely draw a breath afterward.

James just watches him, adoring and just a little smug. He’s seen how his sock garters affect Q, how he pines for them and stares at them, how he touches them when he has James near-bare and spread for him.

It feels good to be unpredictable.

“Problem, quartermaster?” James asks him.

The spell of posh prefect, of bossy quartermaster, all falls away for a moment. Quinn spans his hand trembling up the outside of Bond’s thigh, following the black elastic pulled flat against his skin. His fingers catch against the clips that hold his shirt, and he spreads his touch back down to the inside of James’ leg, over soft skin and downy hair, past his pants and the throbbing cock within. Q bites his lip in a whimper and slips a fingertip beneath the wide band that encircles Bond’s leg.

He snaps it.

“I’m going to come,” he whispers, helpless.

James’ lips lift higher, his smile as soft as it is mischievous. “I know,” he tells him, tensing his muscles and relaxing them again, watching Q’s fingertips tremble against him. “And then you can make me do anything you want to get you hard again,” James whispers. “So you can fuck me properly, like you ache to.”

He loves Q like this, so overcome that his mind loses the speed it so often gathers, that his thoughts slow to nothing more than carnal need and an ache. He loves Q when he comes quickly, he loves doing everything in his power to make him hard again.

Time, they finally have so much bloody time.

He brings a hand to one of the snaps and lifts an eyebrow. “Shall I take them off?”

Q’s eyes dart upward, wide, and then narrow suddenly. “Don’t you bloody dare.”

With his hands still curled hard around Bond’s suspenders, he leans down against him and shoves a kiss against his mouth. If Q can be stubborn in every other aspect of his life, he can be stubborn in this too. He doesn’t want to come now, dampening his pants like an overeager school boy. No, he’s going to savor this surprise that Bond has saved for him for as long as he bloody can.

Q jerks back suddenly when James lunges for another kiss. He leans up for another and Q sits back on his heels, grinning. On the third attempt he catches Bond by his jaw and leans in to lick his lips open and plunge his tongue between, tasting him with a heady moan before gasping free and turning Bond toward the floor once more, cheek against the hardwood.

“On your stomach, 007.”

James curses, letting his eyes close as he does, smiling against the wood before turning his head against it slowly. He moves as he’s instructed, to his stomach, and lets his legs spread. Toes pressing to the floor, muscles in his legs and thighs stark and beautiful for Q to look at and admire as he will. He sets his hands down on either side of his face and turns, just a little, to see Q behind him.

His cock is curved up, hard and red and leaking from the tip. Disheveled and flushed, Q looks truly breathtaking, and James tells him so. He tells him he loves him. He tells him he wants him, now, right fucking now.

Q gives him a firm slap on the bottom and laughs delighted at the sound that spills shameless from James’ mouth when he does. “007,” he purrs, as he rubs cool fingers across the hot mark left on Bond’s ass. “You move when I tell you to move. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten everything already.”

“I couldn’t,” James laughs. “Not ever.”

“There’s a good man,” sighs Q in praise.

He’s patronizing. He’s posh and he’s demanding. He’s insolent and stroppy and an absolute brat when he wants to be and Bond is certain he could not love him more. Except, perhaps, when Q yanks his pants down to bare him. Except, perhaps, because Q leaves the rest of his clothes - shirt and suspenders, socks and garters - in place when he does.

Bond hasn’t time to even beg his quartermaster before the flat of Q’s tongue spreads hot against his hole. He hasn’t time to take breath to moan before Q suckles noisy against his opening. He hears Q spit into his hand and shudders hard in anticipation. Q’s tongue never slides inside him, his fingers never stretch him wide. Q aligns himself and rocks his hips, breaching him with a firm thrust that pushes the breath from Bond’s body.

James curses against the floor, watching his breath pool condensation against it over and over with every panting groan. He shudders when Q pushes in, tight and hot and so long untouched that it aches, it genuinely aches and James relishes it. It feels so bloody good, he will feel it for days, yet.

“Come on,” he groans, hardly to get Q to do more, to go faster or harder, just because he can. He needs to feel his words forced out between gritted teeth, he has to feel Q laugh against him in that gloriously childish and spoiled way. He is so lovely. He is entirely James’ to love. “God, Quinn, don’t you fucking stop.”

Q slaps a hand against James’ thigh and curls his nails, leaving pink lines to mark his grip until they catch beneath a suspender and Q snaps it hard. His other hand grasps James’ hair, just long enough now that he can, and with a grunt through gritted teeth Q bends his head back and gasps as Bond presents his ass higher in response. It’s a stiff entry, the friction damn near painful but enough to Quinn’s burgeoning orgasm at bay for long enough to bury himself.

“God, I’ve missed you,” Q whispers, a weak laugh alighting sweetly through his words. Around his cock, Bond’s body pulses hot. Tugging pressure and intense heat burn Q’s blood to damn near boiling beneath his skin. The elastic waistband of Bond’s scarcely lowered pants rubs stretched against the underside of his cock.

They still have this, amidst the new roles in their lives and the old ones left behind.

They still have this, despite the exhaustion and wonderful distractions with which they find themselves consumed.

They still have each other, now as they always have, drawn together with a deep adoration and unalterable understanding. No one in the world sees them as clearly as the other. No one in the world could love the other so much, for their falterings as much as their glories.

James grits his teeth and shivers, arching back and feeling Q’s rhythm falter, grow erratic and slower. He knows what’s coming. He knows he will feel Q hot between his legs, he will hear him whimper and shiver, too, just like James. He will feel Q laugh and apologize, and turn to his back with a groan to hold Q near and promise him that there is not a hotter thing in the world than to see Q come.

And there isn’t, he doubts there ever will be.

James sets his elbow to the floor and reaches back with his free hand to seek Q’s hand still pressed to his thigh, sliding their fingers together. He moans, another low and demanding thing, and ruts down against the floor with every thrust within him.

Beneath Q’s thrusts, stiff and relentless, Bond sprawls slowly flat. Knees splayed against the floor of the flat he’s not seen in months, peeled half-bare not a dozen feet into the apartment, and pinned. Taken. Fucked, hard, by the man he loves. By the man who loves him. He reaches back just enough to tuck his cock pointing downward before giving up the final inch of space between his body and the floor. Q’s fingers squeeze his tight as he lays against him and digs shuddering thrusts out of time with rising gasps.

“When I’m done,” Q instructs him, his voice a harsh whisper against Bond’s ear. “Take me to bed, and take me in it. My mouth, my - ah -” His words choke short and his fingers clench. He moans again, short and high. Again, with a thrust to match his breaking voice. And with a jerk and a stilted shudder in his sigh, Q loses himself to his lover, trembling.

James groans, grinding down against the floor repeatedly for the stimulation. He feels Q whimper and press close to him, rocking into him again and again to work free all of his release. When he stills, it’s with panting breaths and little sounds of need. He kisses against James’ back, he kisses against his shoulders and neck. He whispers his name and laughs it against him.

James gives himself a breath, another, to settle his heart and control his own impulse to come, and then he flips over, quick enough to catch Q before he can slide to the floor. He holds the man near and kisses him deep, hands in Q’s hair and tugging it straight before he releases it and strokes his back instead.

“To bed?” he asks, humming his pleasure when Q nods. “To bed and bent for me, this time, hmm?”

Quinn slips his arms around James’ neck when he sits up slowly, and not without a grimace of discomfort. It passes quickly, or rather, becomes a pain born of pleasure and so hardly minded. “I’ve tamed you,” Q grins, still clothed but for his open trousers, sleepy-eyed now but heart still racing fast. “Now you tame me.”

“You’re all but purring, darling.”

“Then make me purr,” Q murmurs, kissing softly against Bond’s pulse. He clutches tightly to him as in a careful movement, amidst tangled clothes, Bond stands with Q in his arms. He holds him as he might a bride, his quartermaster’s lissome body light in his arms.

James calls him beautiful and Q believes him, snorting at the word but not denying it. This way, dirty and sweaty and only half-finished, he feels it. James doesn’t tease by walking slowly. He takes them to the bedroom and tosses Q to the bed, moving over him to pin him to the sheets with a hungry kiss, groaning and rubbing up against him.

“You stay just as you are, lovely thing,” James tells him, when Q reaches to work his shirt free, or his trousers off. “Just like that. Imagine what people would say, if they saw you like this now. Bossy and demanding just moments before, and now begging me to fuck you.”

Q shivers and laughs, leaning into James’ hand when he strokes his face.

“Or are you still demanding?” James asks him, grinning. “Still that posh little head boy who fucked me into the floor? This is all your doing, isn’t it? All in your control, you terrible thing. Tell me what you want then. Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

Q arches upward, drawn towards James in body as well as heart and mind. His lips part, flushed scarlet from their kisses, and close against his palm. He nuzzles there, gentled now but no less the same man he was before.

“Let me suck you,” Q asks, and then with a sudden, snorting laugh he shakes his head. “Make me suck you. And when you’re close, lay against me and fuck me so deep I can’t breathe for it. Am I clear, 007?”

“Crystal,” Bond sighs, snaring Q’s lips beneath his own in a kiss. He tilts away only long enough to add, with a rakish grin, “Quartermaster.”

James leans in to kiss him, still gentle and sweet, still loving and playful. Both of them need this, the games and scenarios and fantasies in their heads that have driven them half-mad with want for the last few months. God, do they ever.

A hand snares in soft curls and James tugs Q away. Holding him down to the mattress, he kneels across him, moving up and up until his cock presses just against Q’s chin. “You’ll take it,” he tells Q, smiling when his quartermaster does. “At any pace and any rhythm, but you will take all of it.”

With sleepy-eyed pleasure, Q parts his lips and spreads his tongue flat. Licking wet heat along the underside of his shaft, Q reaches the tip and sighs a little moan against it. Another slow thrust drags Bond’s cock down across his mouth, and he rounds his hips to fuck slowly upward again. Q rests his hands against Bond’s legs, thumbs catching against elastic as he strokes his thighs. He watches wanton and wanting, lashes long across his eyes, mouth open in wait.

He reaches up only to remove his glasses, laughing as instead his hand is caught and gently pinned above his head. He lifts the other to join it and Bond wraps his fingers around his wrist. An arch upward presses Q's chest against the weight of James' body, balls bouncing softly against his chest or throat.

Q licks again, long and eager strokes pressed to the throbbing vein that runs dark along Bond's cock. He seeks out the tip with his tongue when Bond pulls back, dipping it against his foreskin to the slit beneath. James gasps, hands tightening a little, and rocks forward sharply.

It's been so bloody long since they could be truly filthy with the other. Before Emma, their time together always felt finite, bookended by operations and assignments. With Emma in their lives, on those rare nights when they've the energy, they cuddle close and rut in some single configuration until they're done. But this, to pin the other and fuck them to the floor - this, to hold them down and take their mouth until they're made messy... this has been too long ago enjoyed and altogether missed.

With a strangled moan Q bends from the bed. He circles his lips, puffy and pink, sucking hard against the cock that fills his mouth and presses against his throat. A bead of spit leaves a streak shining down his cheek. His eyes water but in their corners, a telltale smile. In their corners, a narrowing, challenging him with no more than a look and a moan for more.

James strokes his thumb beneath Q’s eye as he holds his wrist with his other hand. He doesn’t push further than Q can take, apt as he is at this particular activity. He doesn’t push because he needn’t, because that isn’t the game they’re playing. He relishes the heat around him, the suction, the pleasure, genuine pleasure, Q gets from giving him this.

“God, look at you,” he whispers, spreading his thighs a little more and rocking down, just once, to feel Q choke. He pulls back when Q blinks, rapidly, to focus his eyes again. He lowers his lashes in permission and James does it again. Wholly mutual, wholly desired, Q’s body tenses and the ripple of pressure draws pleasure through them both, relaxing on the next breath when Bond relents. They find a steady rhythm this way, slow and patient and so deep that Q has to open his throat and ease out a long breath for the next. And the next. And the next. Throat clicking, lips slick, eyes wide and mouth filled entirely, he watches James with wide eyes that close only when Bond frames his cheek with a hand and sighs low.

With Bond’s gentle touch as reassurance, Q finds the deep, slow fucking almost meditative. With Bond’s length beading salty slick against the back of his tongue, Q can taste his gratitude. The heady scent of sweat and arousal mingles with the clicking of his spit. His fingernails press against Bond’s thigh and he relents without hesitation, balls drawing up from the sight of watching his cock pulled free from hollowed cheeks and reddened lips.

“Beautiful,” he praises him, cock twitching as he eases it free of Q’s mouth and his partner sucks in a deep breath. It’s held within when Bond slides down his body and kisses him, no mind at all for the mess across his mouth, no mind for anything but appreciating this and everything that Q gives him. Finally Q laughs, squirming, trying to turn to his side and then his belly, but Bond only lays heavier against him.

“Menace,” he murmurs. “How do you want me?”

“Close,” James tells him, bending to kiss the sharp angle of his jaw. “Spread,” he grins, humming delight when Q draws up his knees and tries to squirm free of his trousers, lifting a brow when he can’t. “Now you can remove them, yes,”

“Terrible.”

They work in slow undulations to work Q’s legs free and bare. When they are, he happily and obediently spreads them to frame James’ form. His agent considers him, rubbing languid and teasing against Q’s hole.

“Shall I finger you open, or do you want to do that for me?”

"I know you're accustomed to me doing your work for you, 007," he purrs, pausing only to press his fore- and middle fingers past James' lips. "So it isn't that I want to do it for you," he continues, bending Bond's lips inward as he pushes against his tongue, tugging them outward again in slow thrusts. "Rather," Q concludes, "I want you to watch."

Bond groans low around Q's fingers, suckling them down to the knuckle and sighing when they're pulled loose again. A thread of spit stretches and snaps against his bottom lip and Q bites his own, arching upward. Hand between his legs, he spreads his legs wide, knees tipping to the bed.

A tug of tension and a muted little moan betray the breach of fingertips inside himself.

James watches Q’s face only, he doesn’t seek with his eyes to find the breach between Q’s legs, he doesn’t let his body shudder seeing the penetration. He watches the way Q’s brows tremble and press together, he watches the way his lips part, the way just the tip of his tongue presses to the corner of his mouth in his pleasure.

He watches the way Q becomes, entirely, when he does this. He imagines that this is what he would see, were he to walk in on Q at home, alone, touching himself as he thought of James in the field, James in a suit, James in a mask in Mexico, just his eyes alive with movement, the rest impassive and regal in bone. The thought is beyond lovely.

“You’re going to limp tomorrow,” James promises him softly, as Q touches. “Both of us, heading out to lunch and squirming in our seats at the bloody Savoy, can you imagine?”

Q bites his lip and grins, writhing. Legs pressed flat to the bed to spread himself, his breath quickens Bond's words and the sensation of his fingers - now knuckle-deep - alike. "God," he groans, spanning his free hand up his stomach. His shirt's hem catches on his wrist and he splays his fingers over his belly, pale and firm, twitching muscle drawn into relief every time he spreads his fingers, every time he curves them.

"Both of us," he agrees, his voice dragged low to a throaty whisper, scraped rough with want. "Seated on those plush cushions, the same ones we shared on our first dinner together. Aching every time we move, we breathe..."

"I'll make sure you feel me then, still, pressed inside you," Bond murmurs, drawing a breath as Q's lips part wider with a helpless, happy whimper. "You'll blush when they come to take our order. I'll know why."

"It's like we're on comms again," Quinn laughs. He pushes his shirt up higher to thumb across a tiny, stiffened nipple. "When you tried to make me react to filthy flirtations, and I tried not to make a bloody sound while I fingered myself open to the sound of them."

James laughs, low and deliberate. “Dirty boy, I knew you touched yourself listening to me.”

He watches Q a moment more, watching him tremble, watching him squirm and bite his lip and moan. Then he whispers for him to stop, for him to raise his arms over his head again, for him to keep his eyes on James, and not to look away, not even for a moment.

Then James leans in to kiss him.

He tastes against Q’s tongue the salt of himself, the warmth of Q, the pleasure they share tingling between them. Their moans mingle as well as their breath, low and familiar and so, so welcome. It’s been too bloody long. It feels so good to return to this, with all the time in the world to take for it.

When James pushes in, he pulls back to watch Q’s expressions, he watches his eyes flutter but remain open, obedient and lovely. He watches the blush that darkens pink over his nose and down his cheeks. He watches the way Q’s lips tilt in a smile as he gasps in pleasure and squeezes hard against James’ cock.

"And this is how I always wished it ended," Q confesses, draping an arm across his eyes and laughing brightly, moaning high, as Bond fills him completely. He doesn't hold back, teasing - he's so bloody hard that Q's sure he's already too close for that. Unyielding stiffness widens Q far more than his fingers could, holding him open even as he clenches again to hear James groan.

Bond lifts his arm from over his eyes, to watch as the first firm thrusts flutters them closed and unfurls his lips. From the moment he laid eyes on him, winsome and lovely in the art gallery, from the first moment he teased him about his age and Q simply snorted a quick rejoinder, he's wanted him this way. He's needed him. He'd have taken no for an answer, he's not a bloody barbarian, but the no never came and his persistence paid off.

God, has it ever paid off.

Beneath him Q is pure movement, liquid and lithe. Squeezing his legs tight around Bond's hips, digging heels into his thighs. Reaching to drag him close to kiss and arching his pale, hairless chest toward the ceiling with a keening moan when he's held back down again. His glasses skewed, his hair wild, clothes rumpled and skin ruddy with blush, Quinn shudders pleasure with every stroke inside him and shivers with every stroke back out.

He is lovely, and James tells him so, just to watch Q’s nose wrinkle and his eyes close as he shakes his head. He is lovely and James adores him, and with another thrust James makes Q’s voice waver and shake as he replies that he loves him too. It won’t take long, James teased so much that he can barely hold himself up. They have time for more, they have time for a nap and lazy wake-up sex, they have time for a bath and languid kissing, they have time to curl up on the couch and each fish and chips and laugh at old stories and sweet memories.

They have time.

All the time in the world.

It occurs to James that they could do this, that they could make it official on paper that they are a family, since they will continue to be from now on. It occurs to James that if there is a time to ask, it is this weekend and that perhaps he will - find a time when Q is sprawled in bed and sleeping to get to a store and find the right ring and just...

With a soft whimper he comes, hot and quick inside Q, bending to kiss him as he does. Overwhelmed and overjoyed and entirely in love with the man beneath him. Q sighs against his lips and folds his arms around his neck, drawing James down against him. Their kisses press and hold, clumsy and warm. Q's writhing, roiling temptation settles to calm comfort as Bond pants against Quinn's throat to slow his pulse once more.

Turning his nose against James' temple, Q breathes him in. His body is alight with radiant warmth, their skin slick with sweat. Endless kisses scatter feather-soft over James' cheek until he lays to rest against Q's chest, and slender fingers stroke through his greying hair.

"I'm filthy," Q muses.

"Didn't need me for that. I found you that way."

Quinn snorts when he laughs, ducking his head to breathe against James' hair. "Fair point," he sighs. "Should we -"

"No."

"It's just that -"

"No."

"Lazy sod," Quinn smiles against him. "I love you, you know. Entirely too much."

James hums, long and low and pleased, and sets his palms to Q’s sides to hold him gently. “Good,” he decides, nuzzling against Q’s chest until he feels he’s settled comfortably. “Because I love you far too much, too.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re incredible,” James tells him. Q snorts._
> 
> _“For ordering wine? God save the Queen if I couldn’t even manage that.”_
> 
> _“I love you.”_
> 
> _“I should bloody well hope so.”_

The Savoy is booked up for lunch, so they decide on dinner. Twice as expensive and half as crowded. When James hangs up he merely curls up against Q’s stomach and mumbles their plans to his skin.

They doze for most of the day, content to just share that time and the space and each other. There is no rush to get Emma her food, or to change her or put her to bed, there is no need to supervise her on the mat or make sure she isn’t attempting to scale the stairs. There is just them and their heavy limbs, hot lips and mumbled words.

It’s late afternoon by the time James acquiesces to a bath, happy to stretch and warm and clean up before they head out. He stands and lets Q go first, to start the thing and relieve himself. He himself goes to the main room and seeks through the trousers on the floor for his phone. No messages, just Emma’s smiling face and Q’s behind her as his wallpaper. James smiles and opens the browser.

He’s leaning against the counter in just his socks and suspenders, cock limp against his thigh, when Q comes to fetch him. With a smile, James looks up and locks his phone again.

"Alright, 007?"

"Alright, Q," he agrees. "No messages."

"Are we assuming that's a good thing?"

"Trying my damnedest," Bond smiles, wry. "Should I text them?"

Biting his lip, Quinn considers the question, arms folded atop his head. He stands bare now, clothes shed to puddles of expensive fabric on the floor. Hip cocked slightly to one side, he holds in himself none of the embarrassment that once curved him nervous over his own body to hide it.

He's stunning. Bony and pale and nearly hairless but for the thick thatch between his legs and dark hair brambled down them. Unruly curls windswept and wild, and bright blue eyes behind a few stray locks. Pointed hips and deliciously limp cock.

Bond blinks back upward. "Did you say something?"

"Do keep up," Q sighs, with a smile in his eyes as he turns back to the bathroom. "Text, don't call. Easier for them to answer when she's done raising hell all over their house."

"Right," agrees James, allowing his gaze to linger on the plush curve of Quinn's bottom as he pads back to shut off the water. He texts Amelia, knowing Edward's tendency to forget his phone for days at a time, and asks simply how it's going. The phone is set to rest on the counter in the bathroom as he enters, and breathes in deep the sudden, sharp scent of a match. The sinuous warmth of tobacco follows.

He blinks, and watches Q slip wincing into the bath, cigarette squeezed between his lips.

James forces himself to breathe, which turns out to be much easier than anticipated. He breathes in the smoke and holds it in his lungs when they ache with familiar want for the heady stuff.

“What’s this?” James asks him, stepping closer, folding his arms as though chastising Q in the bath. His quartermaster slowly peels his lips from the filter as his fingers take it up to pull it away, and he sighs a cloud of silver into the bathroom.

“An indulgence.”

“Quite,” James replies, raising a brow and snorting when Q gives him a look and takes another drag. “Shall I bring up the times you scowled at me to put mine out or -”

“That’s because you’ve quit,” Q points out. With the cigarette. Bond squints at them both. "If you've quit, you're not meant to have any more."

"Am I to interpret that you’ve not quit?"

"I have not," Q agrees with a smile, setting it back between his lips to take a quick drag. Smoke twists into his words as he says, "I don't have to quit, because I never started."

"Darling," sighs James, bending to unfasten his suspenders. "Much as I love these games, I'll remind you that you are, in fact, smoking at this very moment."

"For the first time in three months. Nearly six since I bought the pack," he adds. "The house is off limits, for the cats first, then you, now Emma. But I keep them - a pack here, and a pack in my desk - for when things at work become maddening. And in those moments," he says, pausing to shrug and slip lower into the water, "I indulge."

"You're a bloody hypocrite,” Bond exclaims, his envy as transparent as his surprise. “I had no idea you smoke."

Q lifts his brows and wraps a smile around the filter, curling smoke across his tongue to savor it before puffing it towards the ceiling. The water crackles as he lifts a foot from it and lets it drip. "You see? I don't have an addiction to it, so much as a periodic desire. Blame my boyfriend - Trinity term, third year - when I had more papers and projects than hours in the day and nearly suffered a nervous collapse. Left him, kept the tobacco."

James groans and lets his socks and garters drop to the floor. Q moves his legs for James to get into the tub between them and drops his head back further when James reaches for the cigarette, filter between smiling lips. He hums, as James settles into the tub against him.

“I would hate to kickstart this terrible habit for you again,” he says. “Use that iron will of yours and resist.”

James flicks some water at him and Q laughs, holding the cigarette out of harm’s way. He ashes it to the floor and licks his lips, delighted. James settles on his chest, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. When he pushes up a little higher, nuzzling nose to nose with Q, the other smiles and takes a drag of the cigarette again. This time, his exhale comes in gentle coils from his lips, just held there, ready to breathe it into James’ mouth to be kept safe there instead.

And he does, lord he does.

“Cruel,” James tells him, sighing out the smoke through his nose as he leans in to kiss Q’s forehead. “Terribly cruel.”

“Well,” Q snorts, delighted. “Then I’ll be certain not to do it again.”

“You absolutely shouldn’t. It was entirely too arousing and we’re still so stiff from earlier that we can hardly move.”

“Even more reason, then, to play it safe,” he muses, stroking a free hand through James’ hair as he takes another drag. Bond’s lips part in the barest show of anticipation, but Q smiles sly and exhales it away from the bath. “I thought about telling you, but by the time I’d had any opportunity, it seemed like such a non-issue. The moment passed, you know?”

“Keeping secrets, quartermaster?”

“Always a few,” he grins, wriggling in pleasure and sloshing water against the side of the tub. “Am I not allowed?”

“That depends on who you ask.”

“You.”

“Bed the man, you bed the service,” Bond allows, amused. “Or something along those lines.”

The cherry crackles as Q takes another languid drag, chest filling enough to lift Bond a little where he lies. He holds the smoke deep, and when James leans up to meet his mouth, Q parts their lips together and sighs. Bond’s breath is long and steady, held heavy in his lungs as he licks the taste of tobacco from his lips and with a smile narrowing his eyes, Q whispers, “Besides, Bond - turnabout is fair play, isn’t it?”

James raises a brow, and relinquishes Quinn’s smoke with a breath as steady as the ones before. “You think I’m keeping secrets?”

“I know you are,” Q murmurs, appraising. “You’ve lines, just here,” he says, stroking a thumb beside Bond’s eyes. “You only have them when you’re keeping something to yourself. Something you’re anticipating that you can’t yet act on.”

“Shall I tell you?”

Q bites his lip, grinning, and searches between Bond’s eyes as if to read the answer there. After a moment, he shakes his head. “No,” he decides, stretching the word long. “That would take the fun out of it.”

“It certainly would,” James agrees, laying against Q, letting him stroke strong fingers down his back. The cigarette is finished and set aside, and his other hand comes up to stroke over James’ scalp. James groans, low and deep and comfortable and resettles against him.

“We will squirm in our seats today,” he says, laughing low after. “It will be quite a thing to witness.”

“Should we plan to stay for dessert?”

“I could challenge you to,” James replies, lifting his head enough to narrow his eyes at Q. “You always do love challenges.”

“Especially ones that end in pudding,” Q agrees, gaze still narrowed sly and pleased to have his suspicions confirmed. It isn’t bad, whatever Bond is brooding over. That’s a different expression, lines along his mouth deepening incrementally. To most in the world, the man is inscrutable, convincing in whatever he says or does for as long as he wants or needs to be.

To Q, he’s as obvious as the difference between night and day. Years together as working partners, years together now as romantic partners, too. And Q might be bollocks at restraining his own expressions, but he’s a keen read when it comes to others, and especially James - the focus of so much of his life in so many ways.

Once, it was a survival skill, to know when Bond was troubled or contemplating something foolish, without his needing to break cover or so much as blink out of time.

Now, it’s a means to fondly tease one of the world’s greatest intelligence agents about being a truly dreadful liar.

The phone buzzes, and both blink. All at once they lunge, laughing, splashing water across the floor. Q slips back down to the tub as Bond grabs the side of the bath to hoist himself upward. He snatches the phone as Q slides under the water entirely, and grabs Bond’s bottom with both hands.

“James here.”

“Hello dear.” Amelia sounds tired, but in a way that suggests utter fondness, rather than displeasure. A grandparents’ exhaustion. “Your darling girl demanded we call dada before she took a nap.”

“Ah yes,” James replies, squirming a little as Q presses kisses to his thighs beneath the water. “We’ve been expecting this call. Please, put the little double agent on the phone.”

Amelia laughs and says something to Emma away from the receiver. There’s a giggle and a loud demand for “DADA PLEASE” before the phone is handed over.

“Dada grammy says you’re not home,” Emma says, but she doesn’t sound disappointed or hurt, merely curious.

“No, darling, daddy isn’t home,” James tells her. “We aren’t home and we miss you so much.”

Q emerges from the water as much as he can, with Bond’s body suspended over his. He holds himself up easily on one hand, toes pressed to the end of the bath and phone against his ear. A suspended press-up, trapping Q beneath but with enough room that he can gasp against his chest belly, panting breathless.

“I’m in a bloody Bond cave,” he laughs, looking up the length of his agent above him, dripping slick and beautiful. “Is that Emma? Hello, mischief!”

“Dada?” Emma asks, as Q’s voice carries through the phone. How they know which dada she means at any given time is something of a mystery, a skill born of MI6 training and parental instinct alike. Bond tilts a look down at his quartermaster beneath, and raises a brow.

“Dada’s in the bath right now. Did Emma take a bath today?”

“No,” she declares. “No bath.”

“Emma needs to take a bath. Emma needs to be good for grammy and grampy.”

Q squirms to try and push himself higher from the water, but with the arm holding the phone, James lowers his elbow against Quinn’s shoulder to keep him put, grinning.

“I like baths when dada’s there,” Emma says, and Q grins, pressing a hand to his face. He motions for James to put the phone on speaker and hold it out, which he does.

“Dada’s in a bath right now,” Q tells her. “He is.” Some water is splashed against James and Emma giggles. “So if dada can take one, Emma must.”

“Emma must.”

“Yes,” James agrees. “And then naptime. You’re lucky you get naptime.”

“Why?”

“Because your daddy gets so tired at work and they don’t let him have naptime,” James says, biting his lip when Emma replies.

“I’ll tell them off.”

Both fathers blink, and erupt in laughter at once. Clever girl, as fierce as she is brilliant. The daughter of both men, through and through.

“No telling anyone off, Emma,” Q says, propping his arms against the sides of the tub to speak closer to the phone. “Are you having fun?”

“We read books,” she says, and Quinn bites his lip in delight, watching James.

“What did you read?”

“Grampy read.”

“What did grampy read?”

“Hobbit,” she says, and Q all but collapses back into the water in his delight, muffling joyous laughter against his hand. Bond watches him with amusement as he slides away giddy.

“Grampy says you liked it when you were little, but always argued with what the main hobbit should do,” Emma continues, as Q settles to blow silent bubbled in the water with his amusement, eyes raised to the phone. “I don’t think he’s clever, I would go on a adventure.”

“To see the dwarves and the dragons?”

“Yeah!”

James grins and shakes his head, watching Q continue to submerge himself “You wouldn’t be scared?”

“You and dada aren’t scared of anything,” Emma points out. “And I’m gonna be just like you.”

“Oh yeah?” James asks, covering the catch in his voice with a cough. “Just like us?”

“Yeah!”

“Will you take a bath?”

“No.”

It’s only by practiced willpower that both men manage to avoid laughing. Q snorts helpless against James’ chest, his delight so all-consuming that his face bloody aches from smiling. It’s a terrifying thought, in some ways - this sweet little girl ending up like them. It’s equally edifying, to know that she’ll trounce her classmates in academics and athletics alike, and become ever more extraordinary.

It’s a credit to them, validating in a way neither have truly experienced before.

It’s a credit to her, bolstering in a way that alleviates their constant, low-level humming concern.

“Emma,” Q calls out, arms wrapped around Bond’s middle. “Emma, angel.”

“Not an angel,” she proclaims. “A brave hobbit. Not a stupid one.”

“Oh my God,” Q whispers against James’ chest, shaking his head. “Oh God, she’s fantastic. Emma, hobbit,” he says instead, raising his voice once more. “You must be careful then.”

“Why?” She asks, and they can all but see her narrow squint, suspicious and bright.

“Trolls don’t take baths at all,” Q says. “That’s how they become trolls. They get dirtier and dirtier until -”

“No,” she says, flat. “No, that isn’t true.”

“It is,” says Q, entirely somber, even as he clutches to Bond above him, muscles now trembling delightfully from holding them both up. “So you don’t have to take a bath, but you might become a troll if you don’t.”

There’s a long pause, deeply pensive. Bond arches a brow in doubt but his expression softens to a wide smile as Emma sighs. “Poo,” she mutters.

Q can't help it, he snorts. James tuts at him and grins. Through the phone Emma is heard making a compromise with her grandparents regarding bath time.

“I’ll do it,” Emma says after a while, sounding as though she is the one who agreed to take the ring to Mordor. James purses his lips and licks them open again.

“Atta girl.”

“Come home, dada,” she says, and they know it’s to both of them. Q blinks up at Bond, all but submerged, who regards him with a smile.

“Three more bedtimes,” he answers. “And then dada will come home.”

“I miss Desmond,” she sighs, fitful but not on the verge of a true tantrum.

“Desmond misses Emma,” he assures her. “Three sleeps, okay, mischief?”

She sighs again, longer this time, and Q arches up from the bath with a resounding ache in his chest. Like bruising, not a sharp pain but one that’s dull, throbbing deep. He gives Bond a beseeching look, and receives on his brow a kiss for his strain.

“Okay,” she says. “I love you.”

“I love you,” answer both men in tandem. There’s a brief conversation, scarcely heard, before Amelia takes up the phone again.

“She’s fine, for all her dramatics. She and Edward have been up late reading every night,” she says. “She’s eating and sleeping and chasing the cats, poor dears. Don’t worry about us.”

“I don’t,” James assures her. “Thank you, Amelia.”

“You two get along now. I’ve got to wrangle this one into a bath.”

Despite Emma’s previous agreement, there’s a shriek from the other end of the line, and wild giggles. With warm goodbyes, Amelia’s off to gather up their wayward daughter, and Bond hangs up the phone with a moment’s longer look to the picture of her and Q set as his wallpaper. He sets the phone aside.

“Bond,” Q says. His agent hums in question, setting his other hand to the side of the bath to hold himself up properly. Q’s hair fans out dark around his head where he lays in the bath beneath. “I miss her.”

James lowers himself to kiss against Q’s brow again, then his nose, his lips.

“God,” he sighs. “Me too. Achingly.” He kisses Q again before settling against his quartermaster once more. “But you know, I just can't get the image out of my mind of her telling Uncle M off for not letting her dada nap during the day.”

A moment, two, before both burst into uncontrollable giggling. Emma is fairly formidable for her tiny form and young age. Her bossiness is entirely inherited from Q, from the raised brows to the narrowed eyes, the tapping of her toes in impatience and the crossed arms. When she's dressed to match him, James can barely keep it together. Only recently she has mastered the tut that Q so often employs.

Q slips his arms beneath James’ own, hands hooked over his shoulders. He kisses his jaw, shaved smooth from the stubble he regularly allows now. He kisses his chin. He kisses his bottom lip and holds it long, relenting with a sigh.

“She will,” he assures him. “Once she masters the consonants in ‘mister Mallory’, she’ll let him have it. He’s already started making sounds about her being a security risk.”

“As if she’s not always been.”

“Moreso,” Q laughs, dire. “Now that she can understand what we’re saying so clearly, and parrot it back to us.”

Already they’ve had to watch their language towards the other, dropping the titles of ‘agent’ and ‘quartermaster’, of ‘Q’ and ‘007’. To Emma, they’re daddy. They’re James and Quinn. Though neither have spoken of it directly - as if by doing so, they’d give their fears form - they are keenly aware of the unique risks their daughter was brought into, far beyond those with which most parents are concerned. She could readily become a bargaining chip in the wrong hands. An easy hostage plucked up and held in exchange for captive agents or information. A means to harm them, directly and profoundly.

They’ve never spoken of it.

They both know.

And now and then Q wonders if they’d have ever had a child on their own, were Emma not brought to them directly. He can’t detach the conceptualization from her, though. Would he prefer not to have a child, knowing the inherent risk of being so closely tied to two persons intimately tied to MI6? Would he prefer not to have Emma?

No.

Never.

They’ll sort it out.

They always do.

“We’re going to be late for dinner,” Q whispers against James’ jaw, tucking another sucking kiss against his skin. “Reservations at the Savoy wait for no man.”

James hums and doesn't argue, instead nuzzling against Q over and over until the other snorts and gently shoves against him. James snorts, too, and pushes up again, stepping carefully out of the tub.

“It is so funny to me that this was once the norm,” James says, wrapping a towel around his middle before reaching to help Q out of the bath. “Suits and the Savoy and worrying that I’m not doing enough to impress you.”

“Who says you are?” Q asks, tugged up to his feet with a toss of damp curls back from his face. He arches a brow and quirks a smile, stepping from the bath to accept the towel that James offers to him.

“You don’t have to say it,” Bond assures him, leaning close with a smile swept against his lips. Q clutches against his chest and sighs into their kiss, melting against his agent with such intensity that he stumbles a little when Bond takes a step back. “You’re far too easy to read, darling. You’d be a terrible agent.”

“Too clever for that sort of work,” he assures James with a grin. Looping the towel around his waist, he grabs his curls and wrings them dry into the draining tub, and with a vigorous shake clears the rest of the stray droplets from them.

He seeks out clothes not from the stuffed overnight bag he’s brought, but from the closet. Warm cardigans and button-down shirts, unstarched and soft. Wool trousers and a handful of knit ties, two jackets to change into if needed. Comfortable things. Familiar things. Clothes to change into after a scant few hours of sleep before returning under the bridge to Q Branch. He sighs, and James regards him with amusement as he unpacks his things and seeks out the least rumpled suit to dress in.

“God,” Q laughs. “It was another lifetime, wasn’t it? When the most pressing matters at hand, when we were both here, was who was going to shag who that night, and how to most efficiently strip the other bare.”

James hums. “I don't know about you, but I still find that a matter of utmost importance.”

“You’re a cheeky shit,” Q tells him, and James laughs. He ducks to pull a clean pair of socks from his bag and returns to the bathroom to seek out his garters.

“As much as I miss the control of our lives, I wouldn't give her up for the world.” He says it without rancor, he says it without any implication that Q would think different. It is a statement of fact before he dresses from the feet up again, straightening the regard Q with a grin. “Shall I go commando tonight?”

Q blinks. “Are you serious?”

“Oh,” James says. “I never joke about ease of access.”

“You’re trying to disrupt me,” Q responds, with mild alarm at this attempted subterfuge. “You’re trying to keep me from having pudding.”

“I would never dare.”

“Liar,” Q grins, allowing his attention to linger briefly on Bond, bent bare and beautiful, hooking his suspenders to his socks. He’s caught looking, when pale blue eyes lift to meet his own, and turns away quickly to gather some conglomeration of clothing from the closet and toss it to the bed. “You’re still unfairly handsome. I shouldn’t tell you that - I know how your ego eats it up and begs ravenous for more. But I’d be remiss to my own sense of honesty not to inform you.”

“Inform me,” says Bond with a laugh. “I beg of you.”

“Always humming at yourself in the mirror,” Q says as he begins to dress. “Frowning and grabbing the skin of your stomach to pretend you’re not still at twenty-percent body fat.”

James stops, aghast. “Twenty-percent? It’s worse than I thought.”

“God help me.”

“I used to be ten-percent.”

“When you were making a habit of jumping from collapsing buildings and running away from bullets, yes,” Q snorts. “You’re barbaric in your vanity. Absolutely striking and with only dismay towards it. I could still map an anatomical model by your musculature.”

James bites his lip deliberately and cocks his hip, setting his hands against them with a smirk. “Truly?”

Q throws a sweater at him.

In the end, they leave on time. James in a navy suit, black shirt beneath and matching tie, Q with his hair combed and managed into an semblance of order, another of James’ ties knotted around his throat.

Their table is only four booths away from that which they shared the first time they came here together. This time, James has Q order the wine. He asks more questions than he offers statements, but acquiring the needed information to find something well-balanced, to pair with red meat as well as pudding, he decides clearly and - to James’ lack of surprise - very well. The waiter confirms these precise thoughts with a murmur and turns to go, and Q sits back pleased.

“You’re incredible,” James tells him. Q snorts.

“For ordering wine? God save the Queen if I couldn’t even manage that.”

“I love you.”

“I should bloody well hope so.” Q pauses, and grins suddenly, pushing his hair back from his face. “I’m still enjoying cursing, I think.”

James grins at him. “Cock,” he articulates deliberately. Q presses his lips into an o and narrows his eyes.

“Certainly enjoying that.”

“Mr. Holt, need I remind you we are in public?” James chastens him. “Behave.”

“You’re the one acting up at the Savoy,” he mutters, tilting his knuckles against his reddening cheek. “Behave yourself, Mr. Bond. We’ll cause a scandal.”

“For being a pair of caring fathers, enjoying wine and pudding and an expensive evening out? Or for being a current and former member of -”

He pauses, knowing that Q will stop him. And he does, a simple tilt of fingers in an elegant unfurling that silences James and steals his breath, both. He reaches to take Q’s fingers in his hand, and bring them to his lips. Again and again, they’re softly kissed, until Quinn finally turns a wry look to him, sidelong, and withdraws his fingers only as the waiter approaches with their wine.

They order, then and there, appetizers and entrees alike. Q orders the filet mignon, extremely rare. Bond opts for the fish, whatever’s fresh from market, sliding a hand down the front of his shirt in an unconscious movement that Quinn certainly notices. He’s beautiful, and Q wonders at the realization that James truly doesn’t know himself to be. He sees his scars and his soft edges, he sees the man but refuses to see the body. Q sees both, ferocious strength of form and spirit alike. He revels in him, whether fucking or conversing, whether laid quiet in bed or chasing after Emma across the house.

“Can I tell you something?” Q asks. Bond nods, once, brow raised and a smile in his eyes. “I thought of this, when you first invited me here. I don’t normally allow myself such grand imaginings, but it happened despite. I wondered if we’d find ourselves here again, years later, worse for wear but happier, too.”

James watches him and tilts his head, just a little, as he smiles. “I had hoped to bring you here again,” James admits back. “Despite how the first time didn’t go quite according to plan.”

“I have terrible social skills,” Q reminds him, laughing as he takes up his wineglass. “I warned you about them, and you still wanted me.”

“And I still do,” James points out, sitting back in his seat. “Since you sat next to me at the damned gallery in that enormous coat of yours.”

Q’s cheeks warm a little and he flicks his hair back proudly before narrowing his eyes at James again. He had been nervous as hell that day. James had quite a reputation already and being given the great 007 as his first agent was almost certainly a test M wanted to see play out for them both. Two immovable forces brought together. He wonders if she knows that they have thanked her by naming Emma after her, in spirit at least. He wonders what she would say.

“You have no appreciation for the parka,” Q tells him, smiling. “Nor art.”

“I have a great appreciation for the male form, however,” James counters. “And a clever mind.”

“Git,” Q says, and ducks his head with a wide smile, unable to suppress it. His cheeks warm, reddening more as he takes a sip of wine and licks the rich tannins from his bottom lip. His eyes alight above the tops of his glasses, and narrow, mischievous. “Can I tell you something else?”

“Of course.”

“It isn’t nearly so kind.”

“Even better,” Bond murmurs, stretching out a leg beneath the table to stroke his toes against Q’s ankle. Quinn shivers straighter, with a curt sigh to ease it.

“There was a time,” he says, “early on. When we were here, or when we found our getaway closet at the office, that I wondered if you had turned over.”

Bond’s smile quirks a little higher. “As I recall, I did. Often.”

“Shut up,” Q grins. “You know what I mean.”

“You thought I was defecting.”

Q hums against his glass, sipping slowly. “You’re a honeytrapper. It’s what you do. In moments of rutting you into the mattress, I wondered if my vanity made me blind to it. Why else would you pursue me - me, of everyone - so aggressively? Badgering me for dinner, lingering around my desk. Insisting I spend weekends with you and work from the flat. There were times when it seemed like the only possible answer, the only one that made sense, as to why we were doing this at all.”

Bond’s toe strokes again, but his smile fades just a little. “What changed your mind?”

“I couldn’t imagine an organization that would appeal to both your cynicism and your moral code. I couldn’t think of a country you didn’t loathe more than England,” Q says. “And those that seemed viable are in accord with us. If they wanted you, they’d simply borrow you, and if you tried to turn for them, we’d have been informed about it.”

James tilts his head in thanks to the oysters brought to their table. Neither reach for one. When the waiter steps away, Bond meets Q’s gaze. He holds it. “You still don’t see it, do you?”

Q blinks. He pales. His paranoia burns like liquid nitrogen, scalding cold beneath his skin. The little secret James has been holding from him. The one he said he wanted to discover on his own. When he swallows, his throat clicks, and his sigh becomes a shudder. “Oh,” he breathes. “Oh, God. James, don’t do this. If this -”

“If this what?”

“If this has been a long con,” Q whispers, leaning across the table. “If you’ve... gone, turned, if you’ve done this… Years, James. It’s been years, and Emma...” He draws a heavy breath, and shakes his head. The confession lingers on his tongue like lead - he’s in too deep to say no if Bond asks him to turn, too - and the pain is all but physical to try and push the admission forward.

James leans over the table and grasps Q’s hand to hold in both his own. He waits for the soft sound to pass, the furrowed brows to ease a little and light eyes to lift.

“You silly, incredible man,” he sighs. “Don’t you see that I’ve wanted you for you, and nothing else, since we met? Your mind, your terrible sense of humor, everything.” James’ expression softens as Q’s does, he strokes his hands over Q’s and thumbs against his knuckles. “Darling, I am a terribly loyal dog. I love fiercely and protectively. Nothing could make me turn. No princess in Saudi Arabia, or lovely hacker boys in New York. I have my own one of those, I need no other.”

Q curses, laughing as he does. He squeezes James’ hand until his heart settles again. Of course Bond hasn’t turned. Bond hasn’t the patience to run such a long operation, let alone the callousness to father a child for that purpose. It’s an absurd notion, but one ingrained into them by their work, a fear planted deep that someone they trust, someone they love, may be working against them. There is no greater fear for someone in the depths of their Service. Not a one of them has at some point or another failed to wonder.

A twinge of guilt tightens his stomach after the relief and he brings Bond’s knuckles to his lips, kissing his apology there. “Thank God for that, then,” he murmurs, wry. “I was having a terrible time trying to think of how we’d get three cats and a three year-old smuggled into another country.”

“Lots of coats,” James tells him, and they both laugh as the waiter arrives to ask how their meal is. The rest of it passes in quiet comfort, enjoying something well-made in a place that is quiet and high-end. It’s new for them, novel, something they do for each other rather than to impress or win over. That’s been done. That’s guaranteed.

“Dessert,” James says, leaning back in his seat and regarding the new menu deposited on the table for them for perusal. “Let’s see what we missed last time.”

Q leans forward to look at the menu with him, arms folded on the table. There’s a flicker of discomfort, a mild grimace, and he lifts his eyes to find Bond watching him with subtle but pervasive amusement. “Little sore, darling?”

“I merely stretched wrong,” Quinn answers primly.

“I’d say you stretched perfectly.”

Q gives him a narrow look, so near now that they can breathe in the warm fragrance of wine from the other’s lips. Q bites his own, hazarding a glance outside their booth. If anyone’s noticed, they’re politely paying no mind. Releasing his bottom lip slowly, Q tilts his head just enough for the tips of their noses to brush.

“Not as well as you,” he murmurs. “I do hope your knees aren’t too bruised. I’d like to see you on them again before the evening’s through.”

“For you, love?” James replies, voice just as low, eyes hooded. “At this very moment if you asked it of me. But we should be civil, wait until we’re home.”

Q hums agreement and draws their noses together once more before pulling back. They decide on a slice of rather decadent sounding cake to share and two coffees to enjoy with it. They needn’t sleep at a reasonable hour, they needn’t sleep at all, if they choose not to. When their order arrives, James waits patiently for the waiter to depart before taking up a fork and slicing a piece of cake to feed to Q.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” 

Q wraps his lips around the chocolate mousse cake and sets his eyes on Bond as the fork is drawn away. It melts against his tongue, rich in taste but light in texture, and he presses his fingers to his lips to mute a soft sound that escapes anyway. Their gaze holds.

“But you asked me to be civil,” he reminds him. Bond’s eyes narrow in a smile as he takes a bite for himself. “In nothing but your pants, on your knees and hands behind your back…”

“Insatiable.”

“Entirely. Besides all that?” He asks, before accepting another languid bite, tongue stroking the thick dessert from the underside of the fork as it’s slid free. “Emma. Always Emma. Wondering how we’ll manage when she starts preschool in the autumn and she’s away for part of the day. Wondering how we’ll manage when she’s gone longer than that.”

James hums, considering, and leans in with a smile to take a piece of the cake fed to him in turn. “I suppose we will have to rely on the more basic recording devices to start,” he says. “Covert walk-by missions to make sure that no one in the playground is doing something they shouldn’t be. After that, we’ll need to get more clever.”

Q watches him with wide eyes and blinks, sucking chocolate from his bottom lip. “Why?”

“Because she’s your daughter,” James reminds him with a laugh. “And she will figure out where to find the devices and how to dismantle them by the time she’s hit primary school.”

Q takes a breath, holds it for a moment, and laughs. “I meant more in the sense of ‘what will we do with all that spare time’ and ‘how will we cope with missing her so much’, rather than surveillance tactics.” He licks a spot of cake from his bottom lip and sucks it clean. “But I like the way you’re thinking. You know the spines of books are excellent places to conceal hidden microphones.”

“Right,” Bond agrees. “So you’ll handle observation at a distance. I’ll be on the ground.”

“The playground.”

Bond grins. “Someone’s going to need to keep schoolyard bullies in check.”

“James,” Q sighs, laughing. “Emma’s going to be the one bullying.”

“God, that will be awkward to interrupt,” James sighs, leaning in to take another piece of cake from Q’s fork. “She’ll be far too good at defending herself, I fear we have corrupted her.”

“In the best way possible.”

James hold up his mug so Q can clink his own against it, and they enjoy a sip of long black before returning to their cake. It isn’t horribly late, but it feels that way, months and years, now, of basing their lives on the timetable of a three-year-old. Dark is past bedtime, dusk is bath time, dawn is breakfast… it feels strange to have this freedom again, there is a giddiness to it that reminds both of them of being much younger. It’s delightful.

They finish their coffee and cake. Bond pays, though it’s largely ceremonial now considering how their finances have blended in time with the rest of their lives. Q leans upward to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth as Bond helps him into his coat, but when his hand is caught and tugged back into the grand lobby of the hotel, Q can only laugh. There’s a piano player, the music soft and sensual, jazz standards that in their chords carry the promise of dark rooms and darker liquor, pale smoke and warm lips brought close together.

It’s the kind of showiness they have spent most of their lives avoiding, stealthiness and discretion bred into them by training and paranoia alike. They have moved so long in shadow to not be noticed that to be watched now brings a hot blush to Q’s cheeks. Bond pulls him close and with no mind for anyone but Q, he leads him in a slow dance. Q folds their fingers together, and rests his hand against the small of Bond’s back. The suitcases of tourists and businessmen rattle across the tile in the hands of porters. The murmured conversations of those waiting, resting, reveling in the grandeur of the marble and gold lobby seem to soften.

Q lifts his gaze, watching James above his frames. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it. I should have, long before now. Thank you,” he says.

“For dinner?” Bond asks, turning Q in a spin that’s a little clumsy and bringing him close again. Quinn grins against his shoulder.

“For your patience. For letting me see the man beneath the title. For Emma,” he says, a smile in his eyes. “Especially for her.”

James smiles back and continues to lead them in a slow waltz. Around them, more couples dance and no one pays them mind. It’s as though they don’t exist, hiding in plain sight as they have for so many years of their lives. James ducks his head to kiss against the warm curls that have remained combed despite Q’s penchant for running his hands through them.

“Thank you,” he tells him in return. “For taking the time to see through to the man beneath the title. For your patience. And for Emma.” James nuzzles against him and holds Q close. He remembers both of their worry and desperation that night, he remembers being willing to give up that small bundle that had entered his life if it would mean that Q would stay in it. He remembers Q picking up the squalling, fussing little thing and telling James to not even think about giving her away.

Q needn’t thank him for Emma. James has to thank Q for her.

“I love you,” James whispers to him. “I love you so much.”

Quinn slips his arms over James’ shoulders, lifted to his toes by the older, stronger man. He leans into a kiss, held softly, sweetly, and parts it with a sigh and a smile both.

“Take me home, 007.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We_ could _do that. Could doesn’t mean we should. Doesn’t mean we have to, or need to,” he shrugs. “We could also… move to Paris. We could holiday in Scotland. We could…”_
> 
> _“You’ve not got the ability to move from London, or holiday beyond a weekend, so we really couldn’t,” Bond points out, not unkindly. “You’re being coy.”_
> 
> _“No, I’m being uncomfortable,” Q says, chasing away his wry smile with a stiff sip of scotch._

They pick up a bottle of scotch on the way back to the flat. Q sits on the counter as Bond opens it, peeling his shoes off with his toes and letting them fall unminded to the floor. He’s still heady with wine, three glasses down with dinner compared to Bond’s one spread throughout. His cheeks are ruddy, revealed to be brighter still when he slips his glasses off and sets them on the counter.

“I’m going to say something,” Q says, working his tie loose, “with the caveat that I’ve given it no real objective thought, no survey of inventory - be it financial, emotional, or time - and little consideration beyond the emotional. What’s more, I’m sleep-deprived, a little inebriated, and altogether too horny.”

“I like where this is going,” Bond says, as he turns to take down a pair of glasses, and Q trades his tie for the bottle, taking a sharp pull from it. James turns back just in time to see him grimace in a liquor-hot pleasure-pain, fingers set to the buttons on his collar.

“I want to know the first word that comes to mind when I say it.”

Bond gently plucks the bottle away and pours them two fingers a piece, as Q wrestles out of his jumper. "I'm listening.”

The rich crimson knit, striped through with threads of paler reds, falls in a cashmere puddle to the floor. Q sets his heels to the counter door beneath, and bites his bottom lip, brows raised.

"We could have another."

James blinks, amusement warming him as the scotch does, and considers his answer.

“Child?” He asks. “Or cat?”

Q’s eyes narrow, and he takes a steady, slow sip, sucking the warmth from his bottom lip.

“Let’s hear both.”

“No,” James says, “to the cats.” He sips and licks his lips as he watches Q sigh his displeasure. It’s amusing, considering what a handful three cats are already. They genuinely don’t need more - Emma is happy enough gently terrorizing the three that own them.

“Why,” James adds carefully, “to the children?”

It had only recently occurred to them that they can be parents. Only recently that they truly became them and found their stride. In truth, neither have ever considered children at all, let alone multiple. The curse of being only children themselves, perhaps.

Q ducks his head with a smile, then shakes it, curls finally working their way free lock by lock from their careful combing. “It was just a thought. Passing thought, you know. Too much wine...”

“Q.”

“We could do that. Could doesn’t mean we should. Doesn’t mean we have to, or need to,” he shrugs. “We could also… move to Paris. We could holiday in Scotland. We could…”

“You’ve not got the ability to move from London, or holiday beyond a weekend, so we really couldn’t,” Bond points out, not unkindly. “You’re being coy.”

“No, I’m being uncomfortable,” Q says, chasing away his wry smile with a stiff sip of scotch.

"Why?"

"Because I shouldn't have said anything."

"Why children, Q," he asks again, gentler.

There's a huff of breath, a curt shrug, and Q looks upward towards the ceiling, helpless. "Because," he stammers, "because we're good at it. Because we've enjoyed it. I mean, I have, though I won't speak for both of us when I shouldn't even be speaking at all."

He slips down from the counter, socked feet silent against the floor. James steps near and brackets him gently against the counter. With a smile he ducks his head and presses his lips to Q’s forehead until he hums and relents a smile, sleepy and drunk and lovely.

“We are good at it,” James agrees. “We had the best training to prepare us for childcare.” He smiles wider when Q snorts and presses a hand to his eyes. “Please don’t misunderstand my question for discouragement. I genuinely just… I want to know. Do you want us to expand our little family?”

For all his protest, the words sound so much like an offer that Q shivers from the intensity of warmth they spread through him. He wants to write it off to biological imperative. He could accept writing it off to altruism. Neither are entirely false but they make up only a fraction of deeper desire within him, an enormous and nebulous need that defies definition.

Yes, he wants to say, by whatever means.

Yes, he wants to say, because he's never in his life felt so secure as within their self-made family.

Yes, he wants to say, with you.

Yes, yes, yes.

"No." Q shakes his head, managing a smile. He frames James' cheek with his free hand and cradles his scotch with the other. "No, I - I think we're fortunate already. More than. And I hope it maintains - considering we're not yet out of the woods, it's best not to press our luck, hm?" He holds a kiss against the corner of James’ lips, then places another at their center. “Just a passing thought. Impractical as Paris,” he adds with a smile.

Q makes to move away and James holds him still. Q sighs and with a wry look holds up his glass for a refill. James happily pours him one. Q is never dishonest, elusive perhaps but never a liar, and he is never more truthful than when he has had something to drink. James waits. He knows it will come out, word by word, sigh by sigh and thought by thought until words flow like a river with no dam. He will wait for it.

“I don’t know if the woods ever end, really,” James tells him after a while. “With adulthood, parenthood, or work. We just get used to navigating the fallen leaves and tough roots. Sometimes we learn to see in the dark.”

“Or something sees us.”

“Is that what has you worried?” James asks, not unkindly.

Q clears his throat and Bond has his answer, but he waits and watches as Q firms his lips together. Drawing them between his teeth, he holds back his words and breath alike, and with a taut smile, squirms free of James’ arms once more. The quartermaster in silence begins to unbutton his shirt, unsteady steps carrying an off-beat rhythm of their own. He twists to drop the shirt from his shoulders, shuffling his glass from hand to hand. The oxford cloth falls to the floor with a flutter.

“Talk to me, Q.” Bond smiles as he speaks, and he watches as Quinn’s shoulders loosen a little. “Don’t go dark on me now.”

Even decontextualized, the familiar words quiet Q’s frantic heart as shelter calms a wounded bird. He sighs long, swallows a swig of scotch, and glances over his shoulder. “What was the question?”

Demanding, stubborn, beautiful man. In deference to Q’s private pleasure when Bond jumps through hoops, and the pleasure he himself takes from doing so, Bond asks again. “Is that what has you worried? That we’ll be found out.”

“‘Worried’ isn’t the word I’d use,” Q considers, pensive. “‘Terrified’ is a better fit. There’s no waiting to be found out, 007. We’re already known. There’s no way we aren’t. It’s only a matter of time until someone decides to act on it.”

“That’s cynical even for you, Q.”

“Is it?” He asks, turning towards Bond again, in no more than his trousers. “So long as I’m in the Service, we’re compromised. So long as one of us has useful information in our heads, we’re compromised. You’re out. You’re done. You’ve got no new knowledge of active operations, new agents, any of it, and as time goes on, you’re becoming less valuable.”

He tries to take another deep breath, but it laughs out short with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. His breath greys and fades against the scotch glass.

“I’m the vulnerability,” he says, finishing his scotch at once.

“You’re a vulnerability,” James corrects him, taking his glass from him and ignoring the whine Q makes when he seeks for more of the drink he’s being denied. “But you are also not a field agent, darling. The one time you and the field met, the people who saw you on it died. I made sure of that.”

James swallows, moving his hands to frame Q’s face rather than hold his shoulders. “The information you know is invaluable. But you are an unknown entity. No one but the Service knows your name, your aliases, nothing. You built that security system, Q, you know it inside out, any breach you see first and you fix it up so tight no other breach breaks to compensate.”

“But Emma -”

“Will grow up with two entirely overprotective fathers who love her beyond reason,” James tells him warmly. “One of whom still works in the Service, and one of whom no longer does.”

“It isn’t…” Q takes a breath that he wants to hold. He wants to smother his words and let them die in his throat. They’ll rise again, like bile, and in uglier forms for their reanimation. He’ll wake again at night, panicked. He’ll spend the night sleepless in the chair in Emma’s room, for fear that if he lets himself sleep again he’ll wake to find her gone.

Bond’s hand in his hair brings him back and Q closes his eyes, cheek against his palm.

“It isn’t in our hands. It’s beyond whatever systems I’ve built. The greatest weakness in any network is the people who handle it. Do you think they -”

“Which they, Q?”

“Any of them,” he shrugs. “Do you think they don’t watch MI6, to see who comes and goes? Do you think they won’t see us in the park, you - known - and me and her together?”

“I understand,” sighs James. “I know, I know the fear, but you’re beyond that - you’re paranoid.”

Q smiles a little at this, but doesn’t deny it. “The only way I can know that I’ve done everything I can to keep her safe is to leave the Service,” he says. “It was fine when she was small, she was with one or both of us all day. Never out of our sight, never outside of arm’s reach. She’ll be off to preschool in a few months, for afternoons. A year and a half and she’ll be enrolled all day. I’ve been selfish,” he says, eyes averted from the pale blue ones that seek his gaze. “I’ve been selfish.”

James considers him a moment more and sets his hands against Q’s back to warm him, stroking over bare skin before murmuring quietly for Q to follow. He leads them to the bedroom, lights left on and forgotten, door locked and flat entirely safe. It’s very late now, the city beyond the window awake with nighttime revelers and silent passing cars. Q sits on the bed when James puts him there, and lets his eyes linger on the man who kneels before him.

“You have no idea how brave you are,” James tells him. “No idea at all, because your perception of it is headstrong stubbornness you’ve seen from me. Bravery is rarely so active, rarely so forceful. Bravery is working all night because you know that if you stop, someone could die. Bravery is coming home after an exhausting day and showing none of it to your daughter. You, Quinlan Holt, are one of the bravest men I know, and one of the most ignorant of that fact.”

James sits closer between Q’s legs and smiles up at him. “I am so proud of you, every day, for what you do. Not just for what you’ve done for me. But what you do for 009 now, what you do for the entire Service, with your work and your incredible mind. We can curse and tease and laugh about it, but as I am done with the Service, you are not. It is in your blood, you thrive there. Please, don’t let me or Emma be the reason you cut that passion short. Never us.” James licks his lips and smiles a little more. “I may have gained ten percent in body fat, but should anyone come after our daughter, after you, believe me that they will find themselves facing one hell of a bloody retribution for the thought alone.”

A single hitch of breath, as much a hiccup as anything tearful, is for a moment all Q can manage. Then comes a smile, sweet and fleeting. The second attempt sticks. He leans forward and curls his arms around Bond’s neck, cheek to cheek.

“You don’t think it’s a problem at all,” he asks.

“Not in the least.”

“You don’t think I’m selfish.”

“I think that the agents you handle are fortunate beyond bloody measure to have you on the other end of the line. I can’t begin to tell you what that’s worth when you’re out there in the shit.”

Q snorts, smile widening a little. He turns their cheeks together, rubbing softly, and sighs. “And you promise if anything ever happened - God, I can barely even say the words…”

“They’d never see me coming,” Bond murmurs, “and they’d not be alive long enough to see me go.”

With a laugh, Q squeezes him tighter. He tucks a kiss against his cheek, another just in front of his ear. He holds him there until he feels steady again, despite his mild regret at having drawn down the mood so much, and when he leans back it’s with a sigh.

“You know, I’ve spent the last three weeks trying to acclimate myself to the idea of becoming a maths teacher somewhere. Physics, maybe.” He parts his lips with his tongue, a flicker of pink, and grins crooked. “I’d be bored out of my bloody mind.”

“Christ, the thought bores me, and I wouldn’t even be teaching,” James tells him, and Q snorts again, shaking his head.

“Bloody awful.”

“Never, ever do that to yourself,” James tells him, sitting closer and kissing against Q’s cheek, against his jaw, to the corner of his lips. He smiles when Q shifts back and gives James the space to move forward, crawling slowly over the man he loves to pin him to bed.

“You’re bloody sloshed,” James tells him.

“Mhm.”

“Couldn’t get it up if you tried, could you.”

Q licks his lips and shakes his head, delighted by this as he laughs. He arches up to allow James to nose beneath his jaw.

“I still want you on your knees for me,” Q tells him.

“In just my pants?”

“Yes.”

“On the bed?” James asks him. “Or next to it?”

“I’m not standing on the bed,” Q laughs, splaying his hand across his face. He sighs there, just to feel his breath warm fingers made cool in panic. “Would you strip for me?” He peeks through his fingers, brow raised.

“You haven’t got your glasses on.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I would,” Bond acquiesces, amused.

“Will you, then? Please. And since I’m not bothering with trying to have it off tonight, you can bring me another finger of scotch and my glasses before you do.”

“And then?” James sighs, kissing hot against Q’s jaw. His quartermaster - always his quartermaster - laughs and squirms upward against him.

“One thing at a time, 007. Now get a bloody move on.”

So James goes. Back through to the other room where he gathers Q's glasses and pours them both more scotch. He brings it all and the bottle back with him and takes a deliberate languid sip of his own drink before setting it to one of the bedside tables.

A step back is all he needs for Q to see him properly, and James tugs his tie down first, leaving it dangling loose around his throat before he slips his jacket down his arms. It hangs from his fingers before James lets it go and turns on the spot to bend and work the laces of his shoes loose to slip those off next.

A low hum of suddenly dire need rises up from Q as he squirms where he sits. It’s the same need that welled in him when Bond returned from assignment. The same need that erupts between them both whenever they face down any kind of threat and find themselves victorious.

Pushing to sit up with his shoulders against the headboard, he cradles his drink between his knees and watches rapt as Bond’s trousers stretch tight across his ass. Ten-percent extra body fat or no, his backside is as tight as the first time Q grabbed it, pinned to the wall by the older man and rutted speechless. Curved plush and round, from powerful thighs up to the slope of his back, Q sets his teeth to his bottom lip and watches grinning as Bond sets his shoes aside and stands straight again.

For a moment James doesn’t move, doesn’t turn back, and Q lets his lip go to ask him to turn, to command him to, to drunkenly giggle and beg him to, when he hears the hiss of James’ belt through the loops. His agent holds it out to the side, letting the black leather dangle from his fingertips before one by one he peels them away and lets the belt fall.

Then, he turns.

“What next?” He asks, amused.

Q exhales a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, as the belt glistened bright and taut and finally clattered to the floor. He blinks up at James, bites his lip, and laughs again from behind his fingers. “There are so many things I want to do to you right now,” he purrs.

“Oh?”

“Oh,” Q agrees, folding his legs, then straightening them again, drawing up his knees, and finally slipping a hand between them to rest against his thigh. Bond’s eyes narrow in pleasure, and Q squints in return. “Your shirt,” he murmurs. “Slowly.”

James inclines his head but keeps his eyes up as he brings his hands to the top of his shirt to tease down the front of it, without touching any of the buttons. When he reaches his pants, he slowly begins to untuck his shirt with gentle tugs and pulls of his fingers. Freeing the fabric, he gives Q just a sliver of skin to see before he begins to work the buttons bottom to top.

“There are so many things I want you to do to me right now,” James replies, smiling when Q makes a sound.

“I could.”

“You could,” James agrees. “Your fingers are entirely capable, your tongue. Any implement you wish to hold or set, your words...” The last button comes undone and James opens his shirt for Q to see, slowly slipping it down to his elbows where it catches. He brings one hand up to work the cuff free with the other, as he watches Q squirm happily in bed.

He can make out the form of his body beneath the soft cotton undershirt, still unfairly fit even with his much-maligned extra percentage, even with his age that hardly shows at all beyond deepened creases beside his eyes and silvering hair. Q knows Bond’s body as well as his own, if not better. He knows every scar and from whence it came. He knows every dimple and smooth plane. He knows every bone and muscle and downy hair.

And the denial in touching it all, however brief, is intoxicating.

The cuffs come free and Bond lays his shirt aside. Q inclines his head and with no more than that, James obediently twists his undershirt off over his head. Rolling it slowly upward to reveal his belly first, it’s a little softer than at his peak, but Q hardly finds this change wanting. It’s proof, made tangible, of the impossible that they’ve achieved. Comfort. Domesticity. Safety.

The words fade quickly, when Bond’s chest is bared. Soft, greying hair curls over firm muscle. His nipples, small and dark, pebble stiff in the cool air. He lets the shirt rest at the back of his neck, stretched over broad shoulders that curve strong to his neck. Bond lifts a brow. Q bites back a moan, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

“And if I want to do naughty things to you?” Q asks, as drunk on the promise of what’s coming now as he is on scotch. He rubs against a scarlet cheek, and when his hand slips back to his thigh, it’s a little lower than before. “Not only fingers and my tongue. What would you do, 007, if I kept you bound? Your belt around your wrists. Shirt over your eyes…”

James groans softly and shifts his weight from one side to the other. He watches Q follow every twitch and ripple of muscle as he moves, and smiles when Q looks at him again.

“Spread?” He asks.

“Yes.”

“Breath and promise and anticipation,” James continues, feeling his cock stiffen in his pants and knowing Q can see it as he turns just a little more to stand that way instead. “Blinded and incapacitated and only told what to expect, but not when or from whence it comes?”

“Yes,” Q groans, teeth gritted and glass held tight in his free hand. James considers this, and slips one hand free of his shirt to tease the button of his trousers.

“Yes?” He asks.

Q curses, and it’s answer enough. Bond’s smile widens, cocky and prideful, his chin lifted just so. He knows how Q sees him, in contrast to his own dissatisfaction with his physical form - never strong enough, fast enough, sleek enough. Moreso, he knows how Q wants to see him now. His agent, returned after many, many months away. His agent, seen in glimpses of jerky static screen-capture in dangerous places. His agent, beautiful whether bruised and bloody or finely attired in tailored suits.

He can give that to him. He will always be that for him.

When his trouser’s button slips free, Q moans. He swallows the remainder of his scotch and sets the glass aside, dragging his legs beneath him. On his knees, legs splayed, Q sits and watches with eager attention. His lips part a little wider with each zipper-tooth that’s opened.

“Turn,” Q whispers, and though his voice is low, Bond can hear in it the demands of his quartermaster. “Turn and lower them, 007.”

James hums and does, turning on his heels and keeping his ankles crossed as he bends and simultaneously lowers his trousers. He had not worn underwear to the restaurant. He had not made the effort to put any on for this. So as he bends, as his hands slip the heavy fabric down bare legs to the garters that hug his calves, Q has a beautiful view of everything he wants to see.

James takes his time standing again, stepping free of his pants and turning to Q once more, one hand up to tug his hair out of his eyes, the other brushing gently against his cock before he lets both hands drop to his sides. He tilts his head with a smile and raises a brow.

“You’re impossible,” Q scolds him softly, a breathless declaration that finds his hand between his legs to squeeze gently.

“Should I remove the -”

“Absolutely not,” scoffs Q. His grin spreads bright and crooked, a hand against his cheek unsettling his glasses as he reaches up to grasp his hair. “The suspenders stay. The socks, too. Good Christ, look at your cock,” he mutters, laughing into near collapse, his hand pitched against the bed as he leans forward. “Let me taste it.”

“Of course, quartermaster.”

“You were never so well-behaved in the field,” Q grins, slipping forward onto hands and knees as Bond approaches the bed. James’ cock stands hard, now, full and thick and heavy, flushed crimson at the tip that peeks from beneath taut foreskin. Flattening his tongue against his bottom lip, Q bows his head and licks, tilting James’ dick upright. His eyes lift. His mouth closes. He sucks him deep with a long, needy groan.

James lets his eyes close and his lips part as he feels Quinn against him. In the field it had always been a tease, a game, making the other horny enough that come their meeting there was no time to do more than make little sounds and fumble with clothes. But here, here he has time to be obedient, to drive Q wild with the thought alone that he can do anything he wants to him when he has the desire to. 

Not that Q cannot.

Not that he comes too quickly to.

But that he has control, absolute control, over everything he gets James to do for him.

“Fuck,” James sighs, slipping a hand into Q’s hair.

Their expensive wine and rich dessert holds nothing to the taste of Bond like this. Standing tall and proud and beautiful, submitting to Q’s whims even as he does, the heady scent of masculine arousal and the salty slick against his tongue tightens Q’s belly in a dizzying rush. He slips his lips back to the tip alone, tonguing against his foreskin, probing the slit beneath. He grasps James’ hips with his hands and lowers his head again until Bond’s cock presses to the back of his throat. Filling his mouth, pressing down his tongue, spreading lips and jaws, Q hollows his cheeks and suckles noisy, shamelessly noisy, and delights in Bond’s wordless groan from above.

Though Bond holds his curls taut, Q bucks against him. Bond’s cock slips from his lips as Q sighs hard, dragging his hand across his bottom lip to smear away the spit. His eyes alight, mischievous and bright.

“Bed,” he says. “Face down, 007, on your knees.”

James’ fingers slip from Q’s hair, down his cheeks and against his lips before he moves to obey. It doesn’t matter what Q wants to do to him, suck him or rim him, tease him or tie him. It doesn’t matter because it will feel so good, all of it will feel so good. It doesn’t matter because even if Q can’t come, James can, and he will, for him.

The sheets are cool beneath his knees and James sets them wide to start with. Deliberately arching his back to stretch his shoulders, he turns his gaze over one to look at Q as he lowers himself. He splays his fingers against the bed and lowers languidly, smile spreading as Q slips from the bed with a stagger.

He takes up Bond’s belt from where it fell, and tosses it to the bed. A quick breath drawn, Bond studies it before him, sleek and black, and looks back to his quartermaster. Q jerks open his own belt, his trousers next. He shoves his trousers down to the floor and steps free from them, leaving in place his dark blue pants - indigo, since it was still Friday when he put them on - and his socks striped in yellow and navy to his knees. He watches Bond watching him. Bent and bare and lovely, Q strokes seemingly by accident across his groin and sighs.

“You’re beautiful,” murmurs Bond.

“Hush,” Q answers with a grin.

He snares the belt again as he steps closer to the bed, dragging it behind him along the mattress as he circles. It’s rare that Q is struck with moods like this, a desire to play and use more beyond their hands and mouths, a need to savor his control over his willing agent with more than his voice alone. It’s enough, the snap of expectant command, but this is a rare treat. They’ve had time to rest, long deprived of it. They’ve had time to themselves, to be adults with all the freedom to misbehave that entails.

Q folds the belt between his hands, and laughs as he snaps it with a loud crack.

“Your hands, 007,” Q grins. “Behind your back.”

James curses, body tensing in pleasure, before adjusting his position to comfortably set his hands against the base of his back, one wrist crossed over the other. His fingers flex, he reaches for Q’s hands when he feels them and laughs when he is gently denied, a deliberate and almost fond setting of his hands down still again.

“You will bind me?”

Q hums, drawing the belt over the curve of James’ ass and up over his back before returning it down to slip the noose of it around his wrists.

“Blind me?”

“Yes.”

James shivers and presses his cheek against the sheets, sighing long and low, a moan following quietly. He wants him. He wants this. These games that are so rare for them and always so welcome. Neither have done more than dip their toes into this play, but they have enjoyed it together, have enough trust to try and amend and play more. James bites his lip and nuzzles the pillow more.

“Please,” he murmurs.

Once Q envied those that Bond bedded afield. They fell soft to his seductions, sighing sweet sounds against his ear as he snared them by the waist to hold them tight. Once, Q was jealous of them.

Now he knows better.

That dominance is a skill like any other for his agent, but it isn’t what he desires. It’s this relief, to turn his thoughts off and let another guide him, that gives James his greatest satisfaction. It’s this control, held by Q now in the form of a leather belt and firm demands, that Q revels in. As others presume Bond to be utterly domineering, they presume Q - due to size or demeanor or age - to be wilting and weak.

How little others truly know them.

How very well they know each other.

“Bend,” Q tells him, wrapping the belt around his fist and snaring it snug around Q’s wrists. Bond curves his back and pushes his hips higher, presenting with a moan. “Now pay attention, 007.”

“Yes, Q.”

“You’re not to finish without my word,” he purrs, quickly slicking fingers between his lips and pressing them hard between Bond’s cheeks. “When I’m done with you, and I drop the belt, you’re to pin me to the bed and shag me speechless. I trust I needn’t repeat myself.”

“Never,” James assures him, voice already rougher from this alone. He stays still, trusts Q to make him feel good, because he always does. He always knows; when roughness is desired and when intimacy is. When a firm fuck is enough to leave them both blissfully exhausted and when teasing and slow, deep lovemaking is what both crave.

He knows.

James has never and would never trust another more.

He moans as Q curls his fingers and his toes curl in response, relaxing a moment later. He is hard, always, from listening to Q, from imagining everything he is being told. For months, he had nothing else in the field, nothing but his own hand and the white noise of the shower and want. Deep aching want that brought his breath panting against the tile walls, deep aching want that spilled Q’s title from his lips and his release spattering the shower floor.

“Oh,” Q whispers, withdrawing his fingers. “I nearly forgot.”

Bond swallows down a curse, stimulation so quickly withdrawn. He listens to the movements behind him but doesn’t turn to look. And one a knee sock, striped in vivid gold and blue, is wrapped across his eyes, he no longer has the choice. Q knots it snug enough to hold - always careful, even in inebriation, to know the line between desirable pressure and unintentional pain. He cinches the belt around his wrists tighter again as he takes it up, and Bond bends deeper for him.

With his agent so secured, Q presses his fingers inside again, both at once, and spreads them. Between them goes his tongue, spread flat and hot. Bond’s body to Q has always been a thing of beauty, but just as much a playground. His own is sorely lacking, in size and breadth and muscular definition and stamina, but James is game for anything. Stretching him wide or stroking him to groaning, Q’s fingers curled inside and his tongue probing inward. Slipping a hand across his chest to rub or pinching a nipple just hard enough that he shivers out a moan. And beneath all the reactions, all the touch of hands and mouth and cock and body, legs tangled, fingers twined, tongues curling together and breath spilled from one pair of lips to the other, a heart that beats steadfast and assured.

A heart that Q loves more than his own life.

A heart that now pushes Bond’s pulse fast and hot in response to Q.

“Breathe,” Q reminds him with a snorting laugh, as he twists his fingers free and leans back to watch Bond tremble. He strokes his bottom, his thighs, easing tremors to stillness. Bond breathes out long - a groaning, aching moan - and his voice jerks suddenly high as Q smacks the flat of his hand against James’ ass.

The sound he makes is embarrassing when Q does it again. Bound and presented, fingered and licked and told not to come, James is utterly beautiful. His cock leaks thick drops of precome to the bed beneath, jerking with every touch and whisper and tease.

“Please,” James manages again, as much to beg for more as to allow Q to do anything, everything else he has in mind. James is his, entirely, by choice and for good.

Which of course, means that Q does nothing. The room is quiet but for Bond’s breath, rattling quick and wanting. The leather of his belt creaks as Q holds him firm. For long minutes, Q simply watches his agent, muscles gathering at every perceived sound. He gives his sweat time to cool a little; he gives him time to catch his breath.

Bond arches, keening, when fingernails scrape up the back of his thigh, and another firm swat claps loud in the quiet room. He can only imagine how Q became so bloody good at this. He has imagined it, often. Making amends for his own self-loathed but deeply delightful quick-firing orgasms, punishing his tutorial partners for daring to disagree with him. Applying to willing others the same keen sense of control and awareness that makes him such an extraordinary quartermaster.

Bond’s groan pulls longer when Q strokes a finger down his cock, and bends it back between his legs. Warm lips suckle hard, and Q swallows down the pulsing beads of clear slick that well up thick with every touch. He noses against Bond’s balls, letting his cock drop free with a sigh, licking its length to suckle each soft and wrinkled sphere before seeking out his opening once more. Q draws a breath, and moaning, buries his face to lick him open.

James shudders, legs spreading and back arching and moans and pleas and curses buried in the pillow beneath. He wants to come. He wants to come so badly he can taste it and it takes everything not to, everything to remain poised and obedient for the man currently devouring him.

Q may be drunk, but his movements are as precise as ever. Tongue quick and eager, then slow and teasing. Sounds are welcome and delightful, hums and moans and low laughter. 

He pulls back to breathe and smiles as Bond laughs weakly against the bed, trembling and leaking and flushed all over, Q's handprints on his thighs and ass. Claimed and taken and God, it’s good, so so good. Q sinks a kiss against one cheek, then the other. He tilts his nose against Bond’s bottom and nuzzles warmly, scotch softening his composure for a moment from the ferocious dominance moments before.

“I love you,” Q grins. “I love you so much.”

“You’re pissed.”

“I am,” laughs Q. “God, I really am.”

The sudden snap of the belt tighter again is nearly enough to push Bond over, despite his willpower and the well-honed muscles at the floor of his stomach holding back climax. Q’s pleasure tilts his voice to a puppyish snarl, teeth bared in a grin. He curls his hand around Bond’s cock and strokes it downward, milking him with touches that never last quite long enough, that never give Bond the pressure he desires.

“007,” Q purrs. “Do you remember your assignment?”

“Yes, Q.”

“Repeat it back to me.”

James takes a moment to catch his breath. “I’m not to come without your word,” he recites. “When you drop the belt and free me, I’m to pin you to the bed and shag you senseless.”

Q laughs warmly, delighted. “Are you willing to accept your assigned mission?”

“Only if I may make an amendment. A suggestion for an amendment.”

Q hums, allowing, and grins when James eases one leg into a stretch, then the other, still holding his position. 

“I would rather fuck you,” he says, “hard enough to have you sleep for hours, than merely shag you. Sir.”

"Would you?" Q teases him, loosening the belt from around his fist but not yet releasing it entirely. "Would you rather?"

Bond takes a breath to answer and holds it as the flat of the belt strokes warm against his bottom. Licking his lips, he tries to suppress the trembling, constant shiver that courses through him. They need more weekends like this. They will take more weekends like this.

There's a tap, only a tap, of the belt, but in it Bond can feel Q's giddy impatience.

"I would rather," he agrees, cursing sharp when the belt smacks hard against his bottom. "I would rather fuck you. God, I want to fuck you," he groans, his laugh hitching high when he's spanked again.

"I'm taking it into consideration," muses Q. "Alright, I've considered. Amendment accepted," he says, and the belt loosens from James' wrists, released. "Get a move on, 007."

James doesn't need to be told twice, turning quickly to snare blind at Q, grinning when he catches him and pulls him into a rough kiss. Every play, every game no matter how seemingly brutal is entirely loving, a claim for adoration, not for show. He slips his blindfold up and off his head and turns to pin Q to the bed, forcing his legs open with his body as he lays between them.

“God, look at you,” Bond whispers, kissing hard against Q's throat as he fumbles to stroke his fingers against Q’s hole. “Demanding, beautiful, ferocious thing, I adore you.”

Q’s got one sock on and his pants, now stretched aside for Bond to rub him open. His glasses skewed, his hair swept wild, Q squirms laughing against James’ fingers. He wriggles up against his body. Both arms around his neck, one leg hitched up alongside his ribs, Q tucks his mouth against Bond's shoulder and suckles a kiss there, shivering when Bond wets his fingers in his mouth and returns them to spread Q wide.

"I love you," gasps Q, dark-bright eyes alight and ruddy flushed lips parted. His cheeks are scarlet, spread over the bridge of his nose. Arousal and alcohol make him seem younger than he is, boyish and beautiful and utterly shameless. "Speechless," Q breathes. "Not senseless, you're supposed to shag - fuck - me speechless. James, I - "

He arches upward, head thrown back and neck bared, as James presses against him to align his cock. Moaning, Q's fingernails leave marks along Bond's back. His thighs shake. He confesses in a whisper against James' ear that he wants to have another baby with him, the words gasped loose in a rush of plausible deniability should they be found wanting.

James growls that he knows, that he will give Q the world, and then they both stop talking and concentrate instead. 

Q whispers and groans, grinning and splaying his fingers against James’ back, against his hair and over his neck. He takes every thrust with a squeeze of muscles and a sigh of pleasure. Again and again, blush deepening beneath his eyes as James slows down and bends to suck a mark against Q’s throat.

It will remain there, clear for anyone to see. He knows Q will touch it, he knows he will absently finger against it even through a scarf or turtleneck sweater.

Dirty boy.

Insatiable and lovely thing.

Q tries to touch himself, when there is space enough between the collisions of their bodies. It does little good, but a few pleasant beads of clear fluid pushed from inside bead against his belly. Instead, releasing his drunken cock, he spreads his fingers lower, to press against his own opening and James’ hard shaft that spreads him wide. His gaze holds on Bond’s. His lips hang slack to let pass little whimpered gasps with every thrust.

Q nods, a movement so overwhelmed, so subtle, that Bond barely sees it.

He raises a brow.

Biting his lip in a grin, Q lets his eyes close and his body bow upward, nodding again.

James catches his hands in Q’s hair and aids in the bend of him. He needn't be told another time to come, his body aches when he does. He can feel his head spinning from drink, from their revelations together, from the sex. He pants against Q’s cheek as his body empties itself in pulses of heat.

“God,” he sighs. “Oh God.”

Q nuzzles his cheek and kisses him, clumsy. He strokes against his hole and Bond’s cock alike, shivering when he can feel another spurt swell and spill free inside him, tightening to milk him dry. His fingertips are damp. His lips part with a breathless click and close with another lingering kiss.

He quirks a smile, suddenly sleepy. His own almost-orgasm - some mysterious, dry, good-enough equivalent of it - adds to the scarlet warmth in his cheeks. “I don’t think I can move. Maybe ever,” he observes, delighted. “Mission accomplished, Bond. Well done.”

“You needn't,” James assures him, sleepy himself. “You needn't at all.” He will clean them up and they can sleep. In the morning he will wake early, leave a note for Q that he has gone to get breakfast and coffee. He will get them, but also something else.

An idea cemented in his mind by this weekend, by this man and his perfect imperfections. 

“Stay,” James tells him, and with a groan pulls back and out of him to slip from bed and seek for a cloth.

Q wriggles to his stomach, lifting a foot behind himself to slowly pull free his remaining sock. He writhes carefully from his pants, stretched and pulled against his legs and now a little loose. These he tosses to the floor, too, pleased to be able to make a mess of themselves and their space after years, now, of keen attention to keeping things tidy for the sake of Emma.

He smiles against the pillow as Bond rinses a cloth and wrings it out. Reaching for his phone, he checks through his messages and amidst the usual updates from work, there’s a message from hours before that she’s sound asleep. Content to know this, eased into deeper rest to know she’s okay, Q puts his phone back to the nightstand and watches James over his shoulder.

Cool, damp cotton slips across his bottom. Biting his bottom lip, he lifts his hips and shivers, smiling wide.

“Speechless,” Bond says, amused as Q only hums in response. By the time he returns, his quartermaster is snoring, laid on his belly. When James shuts off the dim lights, moonlight silvers Q’s body like mercury. Bond isn’t sure that he’ll be able to sleep so readily, when a new excitement thrums low throughout him. He hardly minds when he can still lay close to Q, and listen to him breathe.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Good morning to you,” Bond responds, amused. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”_
> 
> _“You did and you know you did.”_
> 
> _He doesn’t argue it, but sighs. “I hate to do this…”_
> 
> _“Hell,” murmurs Moneypenny, and he can hear the smile she tries to hide. “Let me guess. You need a favor.”_

When James wakes, Q snuffles grumpily and turns further into the pillow. Alcohol has a lovely habit of turning Q entirely feline, and for a while, James does nothing more than watch him return to sleep again. He strokes a hand through the wiry messy curls and Q damn near purrs, the sound turning into a lovely little snore before he goes quiet again. James kisses the top of his head and gets out of bed.

He leaves a scribbled note for Q, informing him that as they do not have fresh fruit in the house, he is out to get some for their breakfast. He doubts Q will be awake by the time he gets back, but it pays to be careful. Especially with quartermasters.

Dressed and hair vaguely combed, James makes his way out of the flat and down the stairs into the street. It’s a good day for a walk, no car necessary, and he checks the time before heading down the way towards the market that opens before the jeweler's does. The weather is crisp and cool, no promise of rain, and James writes a quick message to Amelia to pass to Emma for when she wakes up.

He misses her. Much as he knows both he and Q need this weekend, much as he genuinely enjoyed the night before, as he will this night and their last after, he misses his daughter. With a laugh, James pockets his phone and grabs a basket as he enters the market.

It’s early enough that the crowds who will come to browse have not yet arrived. Those here now move with purpose through the stalls, haggling down prices, looking for deals on bulk purchases for restaurants. Booths are still being loaded in and neatly arranged, a polite exchange of nods in progress as James surveys their goods.

Bond buys a few assorted pieces of fruit, whatever’s in season. It’s enough to turn into a respectable spread for breakfast and he’ll toss it together in a fruit salad of when they don’t finish it all. He spends far too long evaluating which baked goods would be best, so fresh they’re still warm and heady to breathe in. Finally, he settles on croissants woven through with gruyere cheese. A soft goat cheese is sampled and found agreeable - mild but flavorful, without a scent that will turn Q’s undoubtedly unsteady stomach upside down. He buys a half-pound of prosciutto sliced so thin that little piece he tastes all but melts against his tongue.

He buys flowers, giving the girl in the stall a wink as he asks her to arrange something she’d like to get for herself. Her grin is wry in return, but not unfriendly, as she takes up sprays of lilac and violet irises, daffodils to mirror their bright stripes of yellow, and lush greenery.

“Special occasion?”

“Yes,” James answers, smile widening. “I’m proposing.”

The girl’s cheeks turn pink and she ducks her head, adding a few more sprigs of baby’s breath to complete the bouquet. She waves off the money he hands her for the extra charge.

“Good luck,” she says instead. James just smiles. By the time he leaves the market laden with fresh goods and delicious yet over-priced meat, the shop he needs is opening its doors. James takes the steps two at a time and walks in grinning.

“Very awake for a Saturday,” the man behind the counter tells him. James just narrows his eyes and tilts his head. 

“Hard to sleep when you’re worried about finding just the right ring for your partner.”

The man lets out a laugh. “Oh,” he says. “Jolly good, then. That is lovely, and you needn’t worry at all. And is the young lady joining us then?”

Bond parts his lips with his tongue and laughs softly. “No, no -”

“A surprise then,” the man says, standing and shuffling sideways behind the counter to reach the rings. “How very exciting. We’ll need to know the size, at least, and we do offer resizing as needed if we’re off a bit. What sort of ring do you think she might prefer?”

James considers the question and imagines handing Q a gold thing with a sprig of diamonds on top. The mental image of his response is enough to have James shake with silent laughter, shaking his head after to clear it away.

“We’re both very organic with our choices in jewelry,” he says instead. “I was considering something titanium, simple.”

The man nods and furrows his brows in consideration before selecting a tray of rings a little further down the counter.

“I’m afraid society is still a little slow on the uptake regarding simplicity with engagement rings. Will she be offended if we look for a ring for her in the men’s selections?”

James smiles. “I think that will be perfect.”

They introduce themselves, and throughout pensive conversation and a great deal of consideration, it does emerge that the proposal is not for a young lady after all. The jeweler hardly misses a step, and shows little more mind for it than a brief apology and a laugh that it’s good they wound up in the men’s rings, then. There is a band amongst them all that catches James’ eye most. Ripples of metal curve smooth along it, catching light like waves of water when it moves. It’s simple and strong, with a subtle elegance.

It’s perfect.

And he has no idea whatsoever what size ring Q would wear.

“A moment,” James asks, and the jeweler gives him a smile and a wave.

“Take your time.”

Bond steps outside the shop and quickly dials Moneypenny, who answers with a muffled grunt.

“Good morning to you,” Bond responds, amused. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You did and you know you did.”

He doesn’t argue it, but sighs. “I hate to do this…”

“Hell,” she murmurs, and he can hear the smile she tries to hide. “Let me guess. You need a favor.”

“I’d do it myself but I don’t have access anymore.”

“There’s a reason for that.”

“I don’t need anything beyond my clearance -”

“Which is none.”

“- I need to know the measurement of Q’s hand. I know that we implemented scanners, so it’s got to be on record. In particular, I need to know the circumference of his ring finger. Could you be a lamb and look it up for me? I’ll make it worth your while.”

Eve groans again and then goes quiet, just the sound of the sheets shifting around as she sits. “His ring finger, James?”

“Yes,” he confirms, pressing his lips together to soften out a smile. “That precisely.”

“There go all my chances of trying to win you over to me,” she sighs.

“Would you have tried?”

“God no, you’d be impossible to live with,” she laughs, setting the phone to her shoulder as she reaches for her computer. James can hear the quick keystrokes as she logs in, her even breathing as she looks and says nothing at all - deliberately. After a while she hums, contented, and closes the laptop again. “So, what’s worth my while?”

“Emma,” James answers immediately. 

“Go on.”

“A fully funded and well-prepared picnic for the two of you at any beach of choice. Plus you may dress her as you wish, also fully funded.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Bond,” Eve tells him. “What else is your potential fiance’s finger circumference worth to you?”

James snorts. “What else could you possibly want?”

“The two of you there,” Eve says happily. “Also entirely at my mercy for the dressing. The picnic must be manned at all times, after all. Who will refill the sippy cups when Emma and I are done?”

“It would be my pleasure,” he answers, attempting as best he can to hide his delight at the idea and his faint dismay that she’s going to have them in seersucker suits and boater hats. He listens to a few clicks. He blinks. “What do you mean, potential?”

“Well you’ve not asked him yet, have you,” she says. “Oh, and Tanner. He should come along, too, he could use the sun.”

“Do you think he’s going to say no?” James regrets the question as soon as he asks it, her silence making clear that she certainly heard the note of alarm slipped into his words.

“Do _you_ think he’s going to say no?”

“I didn’t until just now,” Bond sighs. “Thanks for that, Moneypenny.”

Eve hums. “Darling, stupid man. Consider the following: you have lived together for well over two years. You’re still happily shagging despite raising a child together. And, silly boy, you are raising a child together. I hardly see any chance of him saying no.”

“Then why did you mention it?”

“I didn’t, you jumped to that conclusion.”

James groans and rubs his eyes. It’s getting later in the morning than he would like it to be. He had wanted to be home an hour ago to be preparing breakfast for when Q meanders sleepily over from the bedroom and asks him what year it is.

“He won’t say no, James,” Eve assures him, as James sighs against the receiver. She gives him the measurements and promises to make them dress ridiculously well for the picnic. This, at least, earns a snort before James hangs up. When he returns to the jeweler, his smile is somewhat diminished, however.

“Everything alright?”

Bond hums and manages to strengthen his smile, a little. Stiff upper lip and all that. “Just cold feet, I imagine. Nerves.”

“Perfectly normal,” the man assures him. “I was rattled beyond reason when I asked my Edie to marry me. She said yes, which did away with some of the worry, but then you’ve got the actual wedding to plan and… I’m not helping terribly, am I?” He laughs lightly as James shakes his head, rueful. They seek out the right size of ring and Bond pays, with little mind for the cost.

Increasingly, on his way back to the flat with flowers and food and a ring that feels alarmingly heavy in his pocket, he can pay little mind to anything but everything that could go wrong. A car honks at him when he crosses the road at the wrong moment. He sighs and lifts his hand in apology.

Q is in the kitchen when he returns. Hair mussed, eyes scarcely open enough to even call his expression a squint, he’s cradling a cup of tea as if it’s finest bone porcelain, both hands wrapped around it. His heels are planted in the seat of his chair. He’s managed into soft fleece pants and a hoodie.

“I think I’ve gone blind,” Q tells him, hoarse. “That happens sometimes, doesn’t it? With too much liquor.”

“You’ve not got your glasses on, darling.”

Q makes a sound somewhere between a hum of acknowledgment and one of vast suffering, and takes a slow sip. “Thank you for the note,” he says. “I’d nearly called M again when you weren’t there. Thought you’d been kidnapped or something.”

James snorts softly and moves to set his groceries to the kitchen counter. He detours to the bedroom to gather Q’s glasses for him and hands them to the man first, before he passes him the flowers. Q blinks, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, and tilts his head before transferring the cup to the counter and the flowers to his hands instead.

“Flowers,” he says. James can’t help but smile. He’s so lovely, poor sleepy thing.

“Yes,” he tells him. “The house needed some freshening up.”

He leaves Q to finish his tea, navigating the difficult task of setting the flowers down carefully first. James starts on pancakes, blueberries and strawberries chopped into the batter, apples and oranges and nectarines cut up to serve on top with syrup. They are comfortably silent, neither needing to talk to feel close and gentle together, and when James sets the first pancake to cook he turns back to Q and leans in to kiss his forehead.

“How’s the melon?” he asks him.

“Good,” Q answers, around a mouthful of the fruit that he’s slowly gnawing the life from. He manages a smile though, and remarkably lacking in his usual verbosity, adds, “Very good.”

He squints an eye closed when James kisses him again, and then reaches for the flowers. Q’s fingertips follow their velvety petals. His cheeks warm. “I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten me flowers before,” he says. “Probably for the best. Cats would eat them, then leave sick all over the sofa in retribution.”

“Vengeful creatures,” James agrees, flipping the pancake to a plate and dressing it as the next cooks. “Did you speak to your mum at all?”

“No. Emma, though,” he says. “She wanted to talk to us. That’s when I woke up, staggering about with the phone and trying to find pants so I could call M afterward and find you. She said she misses us and she’d very much like to go home, please.”

“Darling,” James laughs, setting the pancake before Q again as he rescues his first plate for the next one. “We need to find something for her to bring home.”

“Another Hoo?” Q asks, smiling. “I think he’s had more surgery now than any owl has the right to.”

“You would have to pry him from her fingers, if you want him,” James reminds Q, amused. He flips another pancake to the plate and starts on it himself as he pours batter for another. “I think she loves him more than she loves us.”

“Undoubtedly,” Q sighs, resting his cheek against his hand as he watches James work. Even sleepy, hungover, exhausted, he can see the man’s beauty, he certainly can appreciate it. “Perhaps a friend for him, then.”

“As long as it isn’t another cat,” James tells him, glancing over his shoulder with a grin.

Q returns it, pressing away his blush with the backs of his fingers. “If I can manage a shower and clothes without making myself motion sick, maybe we could go out later. Fresh air and all that. We can look for something then. Try to enjoy London while we’ve got such pleasant weather, since we see so little of it.”

“Fine weather or London?”

“Both,” Q muses. He waits for James to join him before he starts on the pancakes. Stretching his legs to push his toes beneath Bond’s bottom, he starts to repair a bit as he eats. He finishes nearly all of it, mopping up the fruits’ juice with a swath of pancake, and with berry-stained lips, grudgingly stands to put the kettle on again and make them tea.

“Thank you,” Q says, as he turns to slouch against the counter, watching Bond. “For breakfast. And the flowers. And the note,” he adds, amused. “I only nearly died in my panic before finding it. Tripped over my own clothes and took a knee. Helped the headache an enormous amount.”

James laughs a little, and turns to watch him, Q rubbing the back of his hand against his eye before setting his glasses to his face again. “You’re a right terror,” he says.

“Truly I am,” Q admits, laughing softly. “I have no idea how you put up with me.”

“Neither do I,” James tells him fondly, leaning back to snare Q around the middle and drag him into his lap. With a huff, Q goes, smiling when James kisses his cheek again. “Funnily enough, I want to put up with you for years and years more.”

“Masochist,” Q sighs, squirming in his lap and wrapping an arm back around James’ neck to hold him. Behind them, the kettle clicks with a hiss of steam and Q makes to get up, finding himself stopped with a snug arm around him. “Tea.”

“Later.”

“Sadist,” Q amends, and James laughs. He shifts a little to reach into his pocket, and with a swallow that dries his throat more than it wets it, he sets a little box to the table before them.

“I am that, too,” he agrees.

Q blinks at him, and follows his attention to the box. He doesn’t loosen his arms from Bond’s neck. He scarcely moves at all but to lick his lips and furrow his brow. When he draws a breath, it sticks, and for a moment neither of them say anything.

“What -”

“Open it,” James says gently.

“But what -”

“If you open it, you won’t have to ask me that.”

“It looks like -”

“Q,” he says, with a plaintive sigh against his quartermaster’s shoulder. “Please just bloody open the box.”

Throat clicking with a hard swallow, Q lowers an uncertain arm and stretches to take up the box. Bond murmurs something about it not being a bloody bomb, and Q makes a sound that is a distant cousin to a laugh, high and fluttering. He squints at James, suspicious, and where James’ hand rests on his back, he can feel Q’s heart stumbling over itself in its hurry.

He cracks the box, and closes it immediately with another pitchy almost-laugh.

“Oh no,” he whispers, eyes wide. “You haven’t. You - you aren’t. Are you? Oh, God.”

“I have no doubt, at all, that I want this for as long as we are both lucky enough to have it,” James tells him, nosing against his hair. He lets Q slip free and gets up from the chair, lowering to his knee immediately instead. “I love you. I’m actually bloody gone for you,” James laughs. “Helpless and hopeless and happier than I have ever in my life been, to be. You don’t have to say yes,” he rushes to add. “If it’s - if you don’t want, or need or -” Another laugh, just as nervous as Q’s had been. “A piece of metal will change nothing between us. But I thought I would… check.”

James licks his lips and lifts his eyes to the stunned and flushed and beautiful man who hasn’t yet decided if he wants to sit back down or remain standing, caught somewhat awkwardly between the two.

“Quinlan Edward Holt, you stubborn, beautiful man. Will you marry me?”

The words send a shiver through Q, visible from the little clench of his toes against tile to his shoulders, drawn up incrementally. He holds the box still closed, tighter than he had even held his tea. When he tries to speak, he can scarcely manage, shaking his head.

“You’re terrible,” he exclaims softly. “007, you’re bloody awful.”

Bond stares at him a moment more, as stunned as if he’d been struck. When he tries to stand, though, Q’s hand presses him back down, fingers trembling where he grips his shoulder firm. James takes a breath to apologize, grimacing a little when Q squeezes tighter to hush him.

“You waited until I was bloody hungover so I couldn’t make - you know - words. Nice words. I would, you know, I would tell you yes. Yes, and even when you drive me mad you make me happy. I would tell you that - that I love you, more than anything, and Emma just as much and -”

“Q,” Bond interjects, as the color returns to his face, having drained to the pit of his stomach. “Did you say yes?”

“I think so. I mean, I might have. Bond, I don’t know. James, I mean. I don’t -”

“Are you saying yes now?”

Q’s lips press together between his teeth, and slowly he nods, eyes enormous behind his glasses. Bond takes Q’s hand and the box in both his own. He meets his eyes.

“It’s the one time in my life I’ll ever bother to double-check anything, I assure you,” he says. “Are you, Q - Quinlan - saying yes you’ll let me marry you?”

With a breath of dizzy laughter, edging precariously close to fainting, Q shakes his head and grins, nose wrinkling. “Of course,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I?”

James laughs too, ducking his head and cursing softly at his own doubts. When he looks up again, Q is laughing, hand against his face and eyes narrowed so far they’re damn near closed. Carefully, James slips the box from Q’s hand and opens it, the ring within cool to the touch when he takes it up.

It fits, thank God. James wonders if Eve will appreciate a bottle of prohibitively expensive champagne until the picnic can be arranged.

James leans close to kiss against Q’s knuckles before he stands and envelopes Q in a hug. “I actually thought of asking you yesterday,” he admits, laughing when Q snorts against him. “But I had no ring.”

“You went to get it this morning?”

“I did,” James tells him, grinning when he leans back. “Right after I picked up what we needed from the market.”

“Less than twenty-four hours from idea to ring,” Q asks him, brow lifting before he laughs and leans close. “So you can move quickly when you’re motivated, 007.”

“For this? Absolutely.”

Arms around Bond’s middle, Q extends his hand and peeks at the ring over James’ shoulder. He presses his thumb against it and turns it, in what will surely become a new tic to ease rattled nerves. The metal - Damascus steel, Q knows by sight - warms moment by moment on his finger. It’s beautiful, the folded metal ripples polished dark and sleek against the deep grey behind.

He presses his hand to James’ back again and nuzzles against his shoulder, feline and needy, upsetting his glasses with every rub. “Are you sure you don’t need more time?”

“For what, darling?”

“To - you know - think about it. Once the weekend’s over it’s back to me getting after you about the wash and working too late. I’m not an easy person to be around,” he says, but allows with a grin, “although you’ve done an admirable job so far.”

James snorts. “I am more than happy to do the wash,” he assures him, stroking his hands up and down Q’s back, feeling himself shiver, just incrementally, as adrenaline and panic of a rejection leaves him sigh by sigh. “I’ll be on your ass for the paperwork, so we’ll be square for a good few weeks.”

“Paperwork?”

“For legal adoption,” James tells him, feeling himself smile more when Q pulls back to look at him through dirty glasses, eyes beautifully wide. “More so we can both interrogate Emma’s kindergarten teacher than anything else, believe me.”

Q searches between his eyes, as if trying to find some hidden, inscrutable truth buried beneath all of this. His hands tighten against James’ shirt. He breathes a laugh. “You’re being serious.”

“About the interrogation, absolutely. I’ll need you to do background checks, interviews with their neighbors, deep web searches…”

“You want me to be Emma’s father,” Q asks, snorting delight. “I mean, of course I’d help you vet anyone, we’ll know them down to the pants they prefer, but…”

“She’s already your daughter,” Bond smiles, smoothing Q’s hair back, settling his glasses. “We’re just making you an entirely official daddy to her.”

“I love you,” whispers Q, and with a blink he sways, laughing brightly. “I’ve just lost feeling in the lower half of my body.”

“I love you,” James replies, bending to hoist Q up against him, his legs wrapping loosely around James’ hips. “And I will carry you to bed, you poor hungover man.”

Breakfast is done, the proposal is done, and James could not be happier. He feels like he could run a marathon and not break a sweat doing it. He leans in and kisses Q and grins when Q grips his hair and holds on to him tight. This is their life, chosen and made and built together, this is theirs to have, now, forever.

“What should we do today?” James asks him.

“Haven’t you done enough already?” Q scolds him happily, arms folded tight around Bond’s neck and heels hooked together. He clings to him even as Bond brings him to the bed, even as he lays him back and kisses the smile that’s gathered fine wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. Q doesn’t relent his embrace, but only squirms in little shivers of delight beneath James.

His James.

“Officially mine,” he murmurs, as if speaking a secret. Eyes narrowed and mischievous, he grins when James snorts.

“And you’re officially mine.”

“Christ, when you put it like that…”

“Shut up, darling,” Bond grins, dragging their mouths into a deep kiss, lips twisting eagerly together. Q arches up from the bed and pins Bond to his back, laying slight and slender atop him. They share another kiss, breakfast and tea forgotten, and wake up now - entirely - as they did not before. It was for a good reason, at least.

“I’m going to make a ring for you,” Q decides. “I only need to decide which automobile’s wreckage to salvage the metal from. Do you prefer the DB5, or the DB10?”

“Lord, strike anyone down who says quartermaster Q isn’t a romantic,” James tells him, grinning. “Whichever was the more expensive.”

“You’re cruel.”

“I am,” James groans, squirming as though it’s truly upsetting him to think so. He grins when Q lays on top of him and folds his arms over his chest. “You know, there are certain people we should inform about this new development.”

“Emma?”

“Well, I suppose Emma has always assumed her daddies were daddies, marriage doesn’t occur to her yet. But your parents…”

“Oh God,” groans Q, burying his face in his arms to hide his grin. “And M.”

“Who might as well be your parent, barring that he’d only ask why you’re disrupting him with this,” Bond laughs. Q doesn’t argue the point.

“Moneypenny.”

“Already knows, I’m afraid.” Q raises his head only enough to convey his arched brow to James. Bond sinks his fingers through Quinn’s hair, amused. “I needed her help with sizing the ring off your security scans.”

“Christ, really?”

“I promised her a picnic at the beach, the four of us.”

Q hums something vaguely agreeable and Bond decides that perhaps it’s not the moment to tell him about the rest of the bargain. Stretching out a hand, Q takes up his phone. He bites his lip, and rolls to his back, pointed elbows poking James as he does so, still atop him. “What do I even say to them? Don’t,” he says in answer to himself. “The truth. I know.”

With a sigh, he dials. With a smile, he studies the glinting steel ring on his finger.

James folds his arms over Q’s stomach and holds him near, smiling wider when Q sets the phone on speaker and lays it on his chest. It is Amelia who picks up, sounding just a little short of breath, but her smile just as evident in her tone.

“I hope she isn’t rushing you off your feet,” Q apologizes, and Amelia laughs.

“Not at all, dear, it’s such a relief to have a baby who is so active as she is. She’s a handful but well worth the effort.” Amelia turns to say something to Edward and returns to the call. “Is something wrong, Quinn? As delighted as we are to hear from you, you’ve not called us more than once a day in many, many years. I don’t even think you did while away in Oxford.”

“Hardly called once a term, then. I’m a terrible son,” he says, grinning. “No, no, mum,” he says, as she starts to tut. “I was joking. I was only kidding. I turned out, you know - entirely fine.”

“Quinn, are you quite alright?” Amelia asks.

“Yes,” he sighs, fingers splayed across his face still not enough to mask his blush. “I’m fine. We’re fine. Everyone, it seems, is fine. I’ve something I wanted to tell you.”

“Oh dear.”

“It’s a good thing, I promise,” he says, biting his lip in a grin. “Can you put dad on too?”

“How do I do that?”

“Just put it on speaker.”

“Which button do I press?”

Q sucks his lips between his teeth and draws a patient breath. It takes a few minutes, involving his instruction and both his parents’ murmured displeasure about how complicated it all is these days. Eventually, the sound shifts. Q grins at Bond.

“Can you both hear me?”

“Yes,” they yell, in unison. Q winces an eye closed at the volume.

“I’ve got James on speaker, too. We wanted to tell you that we’re getting married,” he says, unable not to laugh as he says the words. His laughter fills what is, for a few terrifying moments, a resounding silence. Q bites the side of his thumb, and after a minute, asks, “Are you there?”

“What,” Edward asks. “Right now?”

Q laughs again, pressing a hand to his face, and James answers for him. “No, not right now. I only just proposed, I think we need to give him a few days to catch his breath.”

“Oh, darling, that’s lovely!” Amelia says. “Just today?”

“Not even an hour ago,” Q replies. He turns his ring over and over on his finger and tilts his head back against James, settling it beneath his chin. “James asked me if I would like to adopt Emma,” he adds. “Once it’s official.”

“I thought…” Edward begins, then with a brusque clearing of his throat, he repeats himself only louder.

“Legal guardian,” Q manages to squeeze in. “Right now I’m on there as a legal guardian, if something happened. This will just - you know, make sure we both have parental rights. Make it all complete.” He smiles, then laughs. “The whole family.”

“We’re so happy for you both,” Amelia says. “Of course, we’ll need to plan for the wedding. I don’t mind taking over that part of it…”

Edward, in the background, declares with grand pleasure, “Emma, lovely. Did you hear that? You’ll be an official Holt. Or… still a Bond, but…”

“We’ll sort it out,” James laughs, tilting his cheek against Q’s hair. “That’s rather what we do, isn’t it?”

“Daddy.” This demand, close to the phone, overrides Amelia’s hushed now, dear, don’t grab. “Daddy, is that you?”

James smiles wide, bringing a hand to his face, now, as well. “Yes, trouble, it’s me.”

“Daddy, I miss you.”

“I miss you too, love,” James tells her. “Very, very much. We both do.”

“When will you be home?”

“Tomorrow,” Q tells her. “Remember? We will pick you up right before bedtime.”

“Tomorrow,” Emma sighs, voice drooping and pout evident. James can’t help but smile wider for it. 

“What’s wrong, darling?” James asks her softly. “Has Hoo hurt himself again?”

“No,” Emma replies. “Hoo’s okay.”

“Is Emma okay?” Q asks, gathering James’ fingers from his hair to lace them instead with his own.

“No,” she sighs, put-upon. Q knows the feint well, having heard it so many times from James over comms. “Can you come home now?”

Q makes a sound muffled against James’ chest and Bond laughs. “It’ll go by quickly, mischief. I promise. One more sleep with grammy and grampy and the cats, and then before your next bed time we’ll be there.”

“I miss Desmond.”

“I miss Desmond,” Q echoes, grinning. “I imagine Desmond misses us. He’ll be very happy when we’re home.”

“Can he sleep in my bed?”

“If he wants to.”

“Can you make him? Can daddy make him?”

James laughs. “I doubt we could make him leave, darling, he’ll miss you so much.”

“Good,” Emma decides. “Good. I don’t want him to leave.”

James laughs again and presses a kiss against Q’s hair, nuzzling into the warm curls and familiar smell. He’s suddenly tired, feeling light-headed and airy, and so, so relaxed. He wants to tell the world and scream it from the rooftops that he is happy, he is ridiculously, insanely happy.

“What should we bring you back from London?” James asks her after a moment.

“A horse,” Emma replies promptly. “Like the one the policemen ride. One of those.”

“A police horse?” Q confirms. 

“Yes,” Emma says. “It can live in the garden.”

“And who’s going to look after our garden-horse?”

“My garden-horse,” she answers. “I will. Because she’ll be mine.” There’s a pause as Q tries to muffle his laughter, which isn’t helped much when Emma adds, “But maybe you can ride her if you’re nice. Maybe.”

“Right,” James says. “Sounds fair. One garden-police-horse for Emma. What will you name her?”

“Ladybug,” comes the answer, decisive and quick.

Q blinks at James in something like disbelief. His mouth opens, a denial perched upon it, but Bond’s finger comes to rest against his lips.

“Alright, sweetheart,” he says. “We’ll see what we can do. But you’ve got to behave for grammy and grampy, so that you can teach Ladybug how to behave properly, too.”

“I will,” she says, and the phone clatters to the floor with a distant shout of Daddy’s getting me a horse!

Q groans, his laugh now dire, against James’ chest. “Fuck’s sake, Bond.”

“I have a plan,” James tells him softly, greeting Amelia with a smile when she picks up the phone again. They promise to stay in touch, they promise to have a wonderful rest of their weekend. They accept, gratefully, all of the congratulations given them and thank Q’s parents for them. 

Then they hang up the phone and James folds Q in his arms and kisses him again. “We should doze,” he suggests.

“We’ll miss the day.”

“We’ll only miss part of the day,” James tells him. “It’s not yet afternoon.”

Q curses and reaches to his phone again just to check the time, then curses once more. He tucks himself smiling beneath James’ chin, bringing their joined fingers to his lips. He traces over Bond’s knuckles, each one given its due with a soft kiss.

“To think,” he says, “when I woke up this morning, I’d have deemed the day a good one had I managed to stave off death or emptying my stomach.”

“I should say thank you, then, for setting the bar so low.”

Q’s smile widens and he lifts his head, inching along Bond’s body enough to share the pillow with him. He brushes his lips across his scruff, to the corner of his mouth. He reaches up and with the movement masked by the removal of his glasses, he presses away the sudden heat dampening his lashes.

“God,” he sighs, tossing his glasses aside and curling snug against James’ side. “Did you ever think we’d manage it? At all, let alone together? Us,” he laughs, brow creased.

“Never in my life,” James replies earnestly, “did I think you would say yes, that day I walked into your office.”

“Night,” Q reminds him.

“Night,” James obediently amends. “Never in my life.”

“Had you thought of asking me then?”

“Darling, I’ve told you many times, and I know you claim to have very selective hearing but you know I’ve said it before. I have wanted you all to myself since the damned art gallery and your terrible parka.”

“I love the art gallery,” Q argues mildly, laughing when Bond turns to face him and suckles a tickling kiss against his throat. “‘A big bloody ship’, I knew right then that you’d be a handful. You’ve never disappointed me in that.”

“Oh,” laughs Bond. “But I have otherwise?”

“My selective hearing and your selective memory are a perfect match,” Q grins against his mouth, sinking into a slow kiss, soft touches interspersed. He runs a hand down James’ cheek, and nuzzles beside his nose. “No,” he says. “Never once.”

“Did you ever think we’d have this?”

“I thought I was a notch in your belt,” Q muses. “How quickly I realized I was wrong, right around the time I noticed that the wash was half your things.”

He draws a breath, breathing in the warmth of the man who holds him close. “No,” Q says. “I never thought I’d have anything like this. A real relationship, longer than a night. Marriage. A family,” he sighs, his smile so wide his cheeks ache. “Cats. That was it for me, until you.”

“Thank God,” James tells him, arching his neck to kiss him again. It had occurred to him often that this would not last, but it was never his intention to quickly end it. He was prepared for it to be a short thing, he was prepared for Q to tell him to stop, because of work, because he was uninterested, because it was too hard. He had prepared himself for that mentally, and it had never come.

Instead, this had.

“A nap,” James decides. “Then a walk, and a horse for our daughter.”

“You said you had a plan,” Q reminds him.

“I do,” James assures him. “Well thought-out and considered.”

“And will I be privy to it?”

“Perhaps,” James smiles. “After a nap.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"A few bruises will do her good, we all grew up with them.”_
> 
> _“I didn’t.”_
> 
> _“Most of us grew up with them,” James amends, not skipping a beat. “Darling, horse riding is a wonderful thing to get children into. She gains discipline and learns to care for the animals, she develops excellent reflexes and incredible posture. Especially if we sign her up for dressage.”_
> 
> _Q pales._

They rest until the early afternoon, and finally drag themselves up to dress. Q fills a thermos with tea, as Bond bundles up the cheese, bread, and ham from the market that morning. Q leaves his computer on the bed to empty out his bag and make room for their lunch, but scarcely makes it outside the door before hurrying back inside to lock it in an armed safe that exists beneath the floorboards. It was Bond’s safe for paperwork and documents, when the flat was his home. Q simply improved upon it one night when he couldn’t sleep.

“It will send an alert to MI6 monitors, myself, and you, if anyone without our fingerprints touches it,” he told Bond. “And if it’s not disarmed, it will immolate the contents within, and begin a countdown timer.”

“A countdown to what?”

“Explosion,” Q had answered.

If Bond could become accustomed to living with Q, destruction embodied in a cardigan sweater, living with explosives beneath his floorboards seemed like the least of his concerns.

They head out towards St. James Park, a bit of a walk but with the weather so pleasant, neither mind. “Remember,” James murmurs, close enough to Quinn’s ear that the younger man squirms and grins, tickled. “We’re on the lookout for a horse.”

“You’re not going to steal one, are you?”

“Darling, I would never,” James assures him in a voice that sounds entirely not reassuring. They walk on and pick up a bottle of wine from a store they pass, to add to their picnic. It’s been a long time since they have gone for a picnic alone, without a handful of toddler and an entire bag dedicated to her required lunch companions. Instead, now, they have wine and cheese and fresh bread and meat. They have each other’s company and time to take.

“I had an idea to buy her a horse we can manage,” James says as they walk. “Perhaps one the size of her, and stuffed with child-safe stuffing. But on top of that, since we have rather a clever child, we could find and fund some riding lessons for her.”

Q makes a strangled noise - not that of a garrotte around his neck, but perhaps a silken scarf. “I don’t think that’s a particularly good idea,” he manages. Bond raises a brow, amused.

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of horses.”

“Most moving things larger than myself, really,” he sighs. “She could fall, James, she could get - God,” he says with a little heave of anxiety. “Trampled.”

“That’s what the lessons are for,” says James with a smile. “Helmets. Gear. Soft dirt beneath.”

“So she will fall. That’s what you’re saying, that’s what that contingency is for. Have you even ever ridden a - oh, who am I kidding,” he sighs. “Of course you have.”

James laughs, but it’s hardly malicious. “Yes, I’ve ridden horses, Q, I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Scotland. My only entertainment was a rifle and a horse to ride and shoot from. She will be perfectly fine. A few bruises will do her good, we all grew up with them.”

“I didn’t.”

“Most of us grew up with them,” James amends, not skipping a beat. “Darling, horse riding is a wonderful thing to get children into. She gains discipline and learns to care for the animals, she develops excellent reflexes and incredible posture. Especially if we sign her up for dressage.”

Q pales.

James can’t help but laugh. “What?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Q whispers, alarmed as much by this admission as by the horrors he’s imagining.

“You, who went to Eton. Oxford. You, who knows every bloody thing in the world…”

Q listens to him describe the activity, and revels in the fact that it sounds slow and patient. It isn’t hurtling headfirst over barricades or racing down mountainsides or any other number of terrifying possibilities. Dressage, Q agrees to, after he regains himself and they find a toy store. Dressage, with a helmet. With supervision.

He could no more deny Emma’s inclination towards excitement than he could deny that part of the man who helped make her. She may have Q’s intense love of learning, his imperious expectations and his strict tendencies towards tidiness, but she is just as much James’ girl. Spirited and brash, charming beyond reason, clever and quick-thinking and - from the first time she toppled racing down the stairs and hit the bottom laughing - wholly given to adventure.

She’s lovely. She’s perfect. Q relents to James’ wisdom in this, and they arrange for the fairly enormous horse they’ve found to be delivered to their home.

The park is filled with busy families and far too many dogs for Q’s taste. They find a space under a tree near one of the quieter ponds to set out their picnic, and James gets his kicks suggesting other active things their daughter could do.

“Mountain biking.”

“No.”

“Mountain climbing.”

“Out of the question.”

“Beginner’s pilot’s license.”

“James.”

“Deep sea diving.”

“James, stop.”

“Spelunking.”

“James, I will divorce you.”

“Marry me first,” his agent grins.

Q spreads a swath of cheese across his bread with a finger, and offers his finger - not the bread - out to James with a squint. “Ask me again.”

Bond’s lips curl around his fingertip. His tongue presses flat to sweep the cheese from his finger. His eyes alight, and leaning closer, he smiles. “Marry me.”

“Eat,” Q grins, feeding Bond the bit of bread. His thumb follows his bottom lip, and as he chews, Q kisses him gently. “You know what,” he says, “I think I will.”

“Marry me, or divorce me,” asks James from behind his hand.

“The first, certainly. The second, well…”

He gives way to firm fingers dug against his ribs. Q sprawls laughing beneath Bond’s surprise attack, nearly knocking over their wine as he scrambles to escape the tickling. He kicks backward, unable to shout for all his giggling, gasping when James relents but steals his breath again with a lingering kiss.

“I love you,” Q grins, when he’s given leave to breathe. “Far, far more than I should.”

James grins and kisses him again. He relishes the feeling of the ring against Q’s finger when their hands clasp together. He loves him beyond words.

By the time they finish, the afternoon is getting late and the park emptier. They pack up and walk hand in hand back to the flat, this time conversing on the much more amenable topic of the quieter activities their daughter can enjoy once she starts school. 

“Chess.”

“Oh, certainly chess. Perhaps something to do with robotics as well?”

“Debating.”

“Acting.”

“Dance.”

Q gives him a grin, cheeks warming already. “What kind of dancing did you have in mind, Mr. Bond?”

He unshoulders his bag and the remains of their food, only to find himself swept close by twined fingers and a firm tug. Laughing, Q presses his other hand to James’ chest watching him above his glasses. Though Q is unpracticed in dance, to put it very kindly, he is entirely practiced in following Bond’s movements. Whether they’re a world apart and Bond marked by only an insolent boop on his screen, whether they’re completely silent and moved by memories and fears that exceed words, Q follows James as he follows the beat of his own heart. They are inextricable.

So when James steps, Q steps too. When he turns, Q laughs and pivots with an unsteady step. When he bends Q back with an arm beneath his waist, Q lets his head loll back and laughs.

“Any,” James tells him, bringing Q back upright and walking him into a box step for a different dance, different pace and different motion. “She could go with classical ballroom. Elegant and graceful. We could have her start Latin as well. Perhaps jazz and ballet if she wishes.”

“Do you wish?”

“I would rather dance the waltz with her at her graduation, honestly,” James admits, turning Q into yet another type of dance entirely. “But I will be happy to chase her around the living room with a tutu if I must.”

“Giving up the suits completely,, then?”

Q’s nose wrinkles and when Bond parts his lips to answer, Q only laughs. He buries his snorts against James’ shoulder as their bodies pull flush together. Allowing himself to not think about their movements, James’ legs guide his own, their hips so near that light could not pass between. It’s sensual, without being prurient. Deeply sexy without being obscene.

“What on Earth are you doing to me, 007?”

It’s asked with a tilt of befuddled wonder, and when Q is dipped lower than before he snares a leg around Bond’s own for balance. His breath shortens. His eyes widen. Were James to move a muscle out of sync Q would fall to the floor. Suspended, breathless, Q parts his lips, pulled upright into a kiss that breaks with a sound of pure delight from the quartermaster.

“The tango,” Bond tells him. With a sly smile he adds, “This one can probably wait a little while.”

“Please,” Q grins. He slips his arm around James’ neck and rests his cheek against him. Eyes close, they sway together, with slow turns and shuffling steps. “I’m going to be a husband,” he says after a moment, amused, dancing to no music but the synchronous beat of their shared hearts. “I’m going to be a father.”

James turns his head against Q’s and kisses his temple softly. “You will be a husband,” he tells him. “But you have been a father for years.”

They both have. Together. So many things that have defined them, they have done together, gone through together, helped through together. James loves him beyond words, he knows, too, that Q loves him the same. They are the hilarious defiance of an otherwise cruel fate. James kisses him again.

“I want you,” he says softly. “In bed, warm between the sheets, with your hand between my legs working me open for you.”

Q sighs against Bond’s lips, still wine-stained and bright. He leans as though to kiss him, but leads this dance instead, for the few strides it takes them to find the bed and collapse across it. James pushes against the sheets to move himself higher, and Quinn follows, their bodies and breath still bound with this movement as they were in waltz and tango, in parenting and covert operations.

He leaves a bruise against Bond’s throat, suckling heat against the pulse that speeds beneath his lips. Q twists free from his cardigan and shirt at once, pulling them over his head with a gasp to fill his lungs before he sinks deep again. He marks the line of his jaw in kisses and arches upward into his agent’s hands when they spread across his back. Their shoes kick free in clumsy movements and thumps against the floor.

Q catches James’ knee with a hand beneath, and holding him wide, rocks down and drags their stiffening cocks together. There are too many clothes still, too much need to feel the other’s skin heating bare against their own. Leaning away just enough to remove his glasses and toss his hair from his face, Quinn meets James’ eyes and runs a hand down his cheek.

“I never imagined that I could love someone so entirely.”

James hums and sets his hands on either side of Q’s cheeks. He couldn’t either. Not since Vesper, and even then. Even with Vesper it was different. No one, no woman, no man, has ever made him feel as Q does. He is extraordinary.

“I love you,” he promises. “Stubbornness, and silliness, and paranoia and compulsive messiness and all.”

“You’re a cad.”

“You’re mine,” James reminds him with a grin.

“God help us both,” laughs Q, and he draws their mouths together again. In clumsy fumbling, kisses meet and part amidst their baring, working loose an article here and tossing another to the floor there. They make every effort to pin their bodies together throughout. Bond lets loose a laughing curse as Q kneels on James’ trousers to keep them between his knees. Quinn sputters laughing as he’s snared and turned to his side, and the sock he was trying to remove hangs from one foot, unreachable.

It is hardly the ferocious fucking that found Bond splayed against the floor their first night away. It is hardly the demanding dominance that found his hands bound behind his back the night before. Their tussling is playful; their laughter, easy. They undo each other with heady kisses and roving hands. They undo each other with a look.

The sheets cover them entirely, their bodies lit dim by the lowering sun that still spills through the highrise windows and diffuses through the sheet above their heads. Q kisses open-mouthed heat to the hollow of Bond’s throat and lower still. Nuzzling, sighing, breathing deep against his chest, Q’s hands caress his ribs. Broken to various degrees a dozen times or more, bruised beyond counting. Scarred skin puckered beneath his lips from bullets and knives. Smooth patches rubbed raw by rope.

Strength.

Survival.

An unfathomable beauty, in every inch of his existence.

He lifts his eyes, and holds James’ gaze as he runs both hands between his legs, palms parting around his cock. Bond’s thighs spread. His knees press to the bed. Q commands his attention merely by holding his gaze, lips parted in a crooked grin.

James returns it, eyes narrowed in pleasure. His breathing eases to slow and warmth and comfort, though it hitches with every touch Q strokes teasing against him. He is lovely. Mischievous and coy and incredible. James can feel his ring, warmed by his hands all day, and he moans for it.

“Will you tease me, you terrible thing?” James asks him, smiling when Q grasps his leg again. He never stops watching James. Not when he kisses the inside of his knee and down to his ankle. Not when he noses back up and further, still, breathing in the warmth of his thigh as he settles low between his legs. 

Q smiles, crooked and serene. His eyes hood but his gaze remains upward, along the dimly lit expanse of his agent’s body. Curling a tongue around the base of his cock, he suckles a kiss amidst the coarse hair tickling his cheek. Bond’s belly ripples tight. His hips lift. Q keeps hold of the back of his knee to keep him spread, laughing as James’ breath quickens to a pant already.

“Haven’t you had enough teasing for one weekend?” Q asks, turning his head sideways to kiss open-mouthed against the side of James’ shaft. “You’re insatiable.”

“For you,” Bond agrees, grinning before a gasp parts his lips when Q licks a wide, wet swath across the seam of his balls. One arm across his eyes, James reaches with the other hand to push Quinn’s curls back from his face. He hardly holds them in his fingers, he doesn’t push or even guide. He only watches, rapt, as his quartermaster-turned-fiance slips a hand beneath his ass to raise it, and glide his tongue between his cheeks.

He fingers alongside his mouth, digits kept damp by the movement of his mouth against pucked skin and quivering muscle. He splays them wide and licks between, bends them against his prostate to brush teasing while sucking a kiss against his own knuckles. Every movement is allowed to linger long, to resonate reverent adoration through Bond’s body. Q suckles and licks, moans and sighs, stretches and fingers him wide. Both are still bent deep as he can press them when he ascends the familiar flat planes of James’ stomach, detouring to lavish nips and sucks against a nipple that hardens between his lips. To the scar from Eve’s missed shot and the crooked collarbone broken once too many times, Q finds his way back to Bond’s mouth and sighs against his lips.

“You’re impossible,” he murmurs, “in every way.”

James kisses him back, breathless and shivering in pleasure. He can feel a thin sheen of sweat on his skin already, just from this, and turns his head into a sloppy kiss with a moan.

“Just to keep you on your toes,” he tells him, seeking with soft fingers against light curls and over Q’s smooth skin. He is extraordinary. He has been, always, but for James, that moment he smiled in the art gallery, small and fleeting, eyes narrowed with it and body relaxed in posture, that was it. He was gone, entirely, for him.

And now they’re here.

“God, you feel good,” James whispers.

"Hardly as good as you." Q unfurls his fingers wide within his partner and bends them again, brushing small strokes across the sensitive spot that makes James shiver. He kisses parted lips, sucking Bond's bottom one between his own. When he withdraws his hand and Bond rumbles low, Q hushes him with a smile pressed against his mouth.

He parts their kiss only long enough to spit lightly into his hand and slick his cock. Lying face to face, with gentle instruction softly spoken, Q guides James' leg across his hip. It takes a little maneuvering, adjustments made with laughter and kisses in between, until Quinn aligns himself with James' hole and breaches him with a languid rock forward.

With a groan, James settles fully to bed, allowing his breath to leave him completely before he licks his lips and takes another one. His arms find their way around Q’s shoulders and hold him close, foreheads together and eyes open just enough to see the other near. It is a slow taking, a deliberate and deep thing, so intimate it heats their skin and draws shudders and goosebumps against it.

James’ hands wander over Q’s back, to his hair to gently tug it, from his hair to settle over the lovely dimples beside his tailbone. He touches and caresses and worships every inch of him as Q takes him and claims him as his own again. Breathless, they say little, they needn’t say anything at all. This is enough. This speaks volumes.

They kick the sheets off after a while, sweaty skin reflecting the last of the light that falls through the window. James draws both knees up, toes skidding against the mattress, spreading them in pleasure as he pushes forward to meet every thrust. Q wraps his arms beneath Bond's own, hands on his shoulders. Their position, face-to-face on their sides, forces them to slow and patient movements to make sure every thrust is felt and responded to in turn.

The position is just awkward enough, just strained enough, that Q finds he doesn't hurtle headlong towards immediate orgasm. It makes him giddy. His grin is bright as he nuzzles kisses across James' cheek or chin or any other part that crosses the path of his lips. They press together, chest to chest and stomach to stomach, with a film of sweat gliding their movements smooth.

Q reaches between them, over Bond's chest, wrist turning to flatten his palm against his stomach. He wraps his hand around James' cock, stroking with his thumb down. "Before me," Q laughs, the sound soft as a flutter of feathers. "I want you to come before I do."

James curses softly and seeks another kiss, sticky and slippery between them. He is more than happy to come first, he is more than ready to, yet both want to drag this out, both want this to last - it feels so bloody good.

“You’re perfect,” James praises him. “Bloody perfect.”

Languidly, he rocks into Q’s palm as he strokes him, he clenches around Q’s cock in his ass every time he pushes deep. He’s leaking by the time he properly opens his eyes to see Q before him. He looks damn near radiant, exquisite, flushing in pleasure with lips parted and eyes wide. He is lovely. He is James’ entirely.

“God,” he sighs, ducking his head to kiss Q’s throat as he works his hips faster into his hand. Harder, needier, over and over he ruts until the heat in his stomach sparks and spreads down and outwards, hot and slick between them.

Q makes a little sound, startled and delighted, when Bond's body clenches around his in climax. With semen spilled between their bellies and James still gasping breathless against Q's cheek, Q rolls atop him. One hand plants against the bed, the other rests on James' jaw. In an instant, Quinn is flushed, lip bitten reddening between his teeth. In an instant, he's nearing close to climax, the sustained endurance granted by their previous position now giving way.

He praises James as slowly, deeply, he buries himself again and again. He tells him he's strong. He tells him he's absurd. He tells him he's brilliant and he’s beautiful and he's a right bastard. Head bowed, Q watches his cock disappear inside his lover, whimpering low in surprise as his length swells in pulses of pleasure that suddenly unspool.

Bond grabs him by the hair. Q goes. Their mouths mash together in a clumsy tangle, drunk on their devotion and the other in turn. Q smears a hand up Bond's stomach and spreads come across his skin, grabbing his hip to lever up in a last, final thrust. Their kiss breaks when he moans, unable to keep their mouths joined when his voice spills free.

James shivers beneath him, hands down to grasp against Q’s hips, feeling them shift and turn and tense as he spills his release. It’s so unusual, so novel to have Q come after James does, for both of them. They relish in it as long as they can before their bodies press heavy together and they lay panting tangled together in bed.

James slips a hand up Q’s back and into his hair, laughing low and warm as he squeezes his muscles once more, to milk the very last of Q’s come from him.

“Now that we should do more often,” he mumbles, licking his lips and smiling. “Much, much more.”

“Not for lack of trying, I assure you,” Q grins, rueful. His nose wrinkles as he’s kissed on the cheek. He squints an eye closed as he’s kissed there again. He squirms and laughs when there’s a third and shoves into a firm embrace against Bond’s chest. His cock slips free, and his head ducks beneath James’ chin. There, sheltered and safe and warm, he closes his eyes. “Can I tell you something?”

James hums, curious and already half-asleep.

“This has been lovely,” Q sighs, but before he can say anything else, Bond kisses his brow.

“You can tell me that as often as you like. Especially after we just -”

“I wasn’t finished,” Q laughs, snorting. “I was going to say thank you, for finally dragging me off for this. For making this much-needed holiday so singularly remarkable. Yes, for the sex, too. And then I was going to confess to you…”

“Oh dear.”

“That I really can’t wait to go home again,” Q finishes with a grin, and a firm nuzzle against Bond’s neck.

James laughs, holding him near, letting his eyes close in the ultimate trust and surrender to his partner. “God,” he sighs. “Me too. I miss our terrible child. I miss the mess of the house. I miss the bloody cats.”

“I may need that in writing,” Q tells him.

“I hate the bloody cats,” James obediently amends, to a sleepy snort from Quinn against him. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How we can grow so used to a routine, complain about it, and miss it so desperately when it gets interrupted?”

Q hums his agreement, catching James’ chest hair between his lips in little kisses. “Not a bad interruption, though,” he murmurs.

“Actually a very good one. Several times over, and for several reasons.”

“Egomaniac.”

“Stubborn shit.”

“I love you,” Q grins, helpless to the heat that Bond builds in Q’s chest with words alone, helpless to the sensation of being pressed small against him. Helpless to his charms and his cleverness. Helpless even when he’s an absolute tart or a complete arse. “And while I wouldn’t trade a moment of this weekend, except perhaps the hangover, for anything,” he says, “it’ll make going home even better.”

“I’m sure our little secret agent will let us know her displeasure in being gone so long. Worse than M, that one.”

“Much like the M,” Q grins. “At least, the one she’s named for.”

“Terrifying.”

“Our little security breach. Our… police-horse garden trainer,” Q snorts, laughing. “You know we could go back tonight. Surprise her. See mum and dad for a bit. Unless you had other plans,” he adds, arching a brow in a facsimile of suaveness that fails utterly.

James hums, and draws his hand up to check the time. It is very early evening. If they both shower now and dress, pack their things and leave just after rush hour they will be home before Emma’s bedtime - just as they had promised, but a day earlier.

“The horse won’t beat us to the house, that way,” James considers. “Won’t be caught in the rain if it does.”

“It’s not going to rain.”

“Darling, it’s England. Of course it will rain. The question is how hard and will it bring mugginess with it?” James replies lazily, stretching beneath Q’s lithe form and turning into him to kiss him again. “We could save time and share a shower, too,” he continues. “Be efficient.”

“Think you can recover that quickly?” Q asks, brow arching once more, and with a sleek smile beneath. The wrinkle in his nose alters the effect, but hardly lessens it. Bond kisses the bridge of his nose. He kisses him directly.

“Nothing ventured,” Bond murmurs with a smile, “nothing gained.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I can carry you upstairs,” James offers, both of them snorting before Q schools his expression to listen carefully. “And right into bed where - do you know what we’ll do there?”_
> 
> _“What will we do there?”_
> 
> _“Sleep like the bloody dead,” James laughs._

Bond is the last man to take an assignment lying down, although they often involved that. He performs admirably in the shower, given time to recover, and pins Q against the tile walls until his quartermaster’s knees nearly give way and he succumbs to speechless giggling. They manage a shower, amidst their kissing and fondling. Q nails him with a tightly wound towel square on the bottom and it leaves a mark.

He’s spanked thoroughly for his efforts, slung naked and dripping across Bond’s knees. Q is made to declare his apology, amidst giddy laughter and groans of pained pleasure. Palm prints are left aching scarlet across his backside. These are admired at great length in the full-length mirror beside the closet, as Q smokes half a cigarette and then promptly brushes his teeth.

Somehow, they eventually make their way into clothes, exhausted and thoroughly sated. They gather the food they didn’t finish and a few bottles of wine from Bond’s remaining stash. Q retrieves his laptop and all his chargers, and locking their getaway flat behind them, they go. When they’re halfway back to Harrow, Q laments not having changed the sheets, but he’s settled by the thought of how much they’ll smell like James when next he needs to crash in Chelsea for the night.

Their excitement builds, and so too does the speed at which James drives. Q has mostly become accustomed to it, familiar enough with the Aston’s augmented safety features and Bond’s particular prowess with driving it through even a crowded city. That is to say, he still clutches the door handle and pales as James skids into a turn through a junction, speeding towards the Holt household.

“It’s going to be a surprise when she sees us,” Q laments in a murmur. “Smeared all across the asphalt in a million pounds’ worth of wreckage.”

“Only a million?”

“Several,” Q relents. “I’m going to be ill.”

James sends him a smile. “Open the window then, if you would. We can’t be late for bed time, I’m afraid.”

Q groans but doesn’t complain again, checking his watch and resigning himself to being tossed like a sack of potatoes in the front seat. 

They reach the house just minutes before Emma is meant to be put to bed, and take the short flight of stairs two at a time to reach the door together. The bell rings and they immediately hear shuffling from behind the door, their daughter’s muffled questions and Edward’s gentle reply. When the door opens, they barely have time to greet Amelia before Emma shrieks her delight.

“Daddy!”

She means both, of course, or either - each has their own intonation of the word melded together in her joy. She’s dressed for bed already and nearly skids over on the wooden floor as her socked-feet streak across it. She flings out her arms and they both catch her, used to her light weight and sweet child smell. Q holds her close and James steps up to stroke her back and hair as she wriggles and mumbles how happy she is to see them.

“We decided on a surprise,” James tells Amelia, one hand occupied as it is grasped by tiny fingers to be held close. “For both you and our little terror.”

“Well, now she’ll never get to sleep,” Amelia sighs, scarcely able to conceal a smile. She leans close to give him a kiss on the cheek, and Quinn in turn. “Welcome home.”

Quinn is all but staggered by Emma’s energy, grasping her tighter as she snares him with little arms around his neck. He laughs as she carries on, and on and on and on, eagerly telling them of her adventures with Hoo and how she was going to run away with him to find them and Q just breathes. Nose against her neck, he takes a deep breath that satisfies and soothes the latent, low vibrations of anxiety that have kept him from settling entirely in their time away.

“Staying for a cup of tea, at least?” Edward’s tone is hopeful, and Q suspects it’s as much that he needn’t convince Emma to go to bed as it is pleasure to see them again. He gives his dad a grin and nods.

“Yes, it seems that’s in order. Darling, slowly,” he says to Emma, stroking her wild copper hair back from her face. “What was that about running away?”

“To find you and daddy,” she declares, “and make you come home again.”

James hums and steps close again, cradling Emma’s head as she relaxes against Q more. After a while, Q turns to let James hold her properly, taking a few steps away and smiling brightly when Amelia asks to see his ring. James hoists Emma up against his hip and gently raises her chin. He frowns and she frowns back. He furrows his brows further and she giggles, unable to keep her own face quite so stern.

“You would have really worried grampy and grammy if you’d tried to run away, love,” he says.

“But it would have been to find you,” she says. “And I would have been with Hoo.”

James kisses her forehead and makes it a point to remember to find a way to explain to her how that is not the way to go about things. But not now, not here, when she is tired and over excited and they just broke every speeding law in London to get to her.

“Did you bring me something?” She asks, her mind quick to change topics when her parents are home again. “Something from when you were away?”

“Did we bring you something?” James asks her, feigning shock, and Emma nods, grinning. “Why would we bring you something?”

“You said,” she insists, and the quick demand draws Q’s attention back for a moment from his tea and his parents and his ring. “You said that you would,” she says.

How many times has Q heard that same tone leveled across the desk of the head of MI6? How many times directed towards himself, a pitch hinging between demand and irritation? His grin widens and he turns back to his parents, to relinquish his hand to his mum so she can see its patterning in the light.

“I told you we’d do our best,” James corrects her, gently, but she squints at the smile he tries to suppress, dark eyes seeking over her daddy’s face. He leans in to give her a kiss on the cheek, and she leans back to regard him at a very tiny distance.

“You tricked me,” she says, her words slower now, pensive. “You said you’d be back after one more sleep, and that wasn’t true. Then you said you’d try to get me a horse, but you haven’t one, so maybe that is true and you have done it if you’re tricking me now.”

James turns his face into an expression of dramatic surprise and blinks at his daughter. “Q,” he says. “Darling, this one is certainly yours, she’s far too clever to be just my kid.” Emma considers him for a moment and brings a hand to her mouth to chew on when Q looks at her as well, taking the cue to step forward and join the game.

“Too clever, you say?” He asks, gently pinching Emma’s cheek and regarding her from James’ side.

“She thinks,” James explains. “That if we tricked her into thinking there was one more sleep ‘til we got home, that we may also be tricking when we suggested we would only try to get a horse for her.”

Q considers the dilemma and nods slowly, folding his bottom lip between his teeth. Emma looks between the both of them, her smile slowly etching its way across her entire face; eyes narrowing, cheeks pinking, lips parting and little body squirming.

“You got me a horse?” She asks softly.

“I think,” Q says. “That we should take little miss to bed, and see what comes knocking on the door in the morning.”

“Horses don’t knock,” she scoffs. “They have hooves.”

“Well then, I think I know our bedtime story for tonight,” Quinn says happily, accepting Emma back from Bond. “About a horse that seemingly could perform mathematics, and the gullibility of those who believed it.”

Amelia sighs, patient - ever patient - and amused, as Edward mutters that he tells better stories than that. Bond goes with him to seek out all of Emma’s things, strewn across the house as they are, and Quinn keeps their daughter close, one arm beneath her and one against the back of her head as already she settles against him.

“Thank you,” he says to his mum. “Thank you both for keeping her for a bit. We didn’t mean to disrupt your weekend -”

“Nonsense,” she answers with a smile. “We’re happy to have her.”

“She’s a bit of a handful.”

“More than a bit,” laughs Amelia. “She reminds of you when you were little. Correcting us constantly about this or that. There was a time when you were so ardent about a particular dinosaur that Edward went to the encyclopedias to look it up, with a scotch in hand and you know your father’s not a drinker.”

“And?” Q grins.

“You were right,” she smiles. “Stubborn boy. Have you set a date yet?”

Quinn blinks.

“A date,” she says again. “For the wedding.”

And at this, he pales, laughing high and airy. “A wedding. Oh, no. No. I don’t think that we - I mean, just something small I imagine, at the city hall…”

“Darling, this is a very important day,” Amelia tells him as Q swallows and hoists Emma a little higher. “And Emma is old enough to participate, now, I’m sure she would like to be part of that special ceremony.”

“What ‘mony?” Emma mumbles against Q, drawing her hand up to press a thumb between her lips.

“Your fathers will be getting married,” Amelia tells her, stroking her hair. Emma hums a sound and adjusts her position against Q’s shoulder.

“Daddies don't need to marry, they’re already daddies,” Emma explains, sleepily.

Amelia shares a smile with Quinn, who blushes terribly at the proclamation. “Yes,” his mum agrees. “They are that, and that won’t change either way, will it?”

Emma doesn’t answer, already settled to a deeper sleep than Q imagines she’s had in the few nights away from home. He gives her a gentle squeeze and kisses her hair, and then his mum’s cheek in turn. She pats lightly against his cheek in return.

“We’ll talk about it,” Q relents. “James and I and you both, we’ll talk about it.”

“Talk about it like your job? Or like James? Or…”

“No,” he grins, accepting this fond admonishment. “Really talk about it. I promise.”

James and Edward reappear, the older man’s hand clapping firmly against Bond’s shoulder as they return. Bond is laden with an unconscionable amount of bags for their daughter, but as he offers Q a tired smile, Quinn is sure he’s never looked lovelier.

“With me?” James asks, quirking a smile. Q nods, once, blushing warm at their comms interplay now rewoven into new context.

“All set,” he agrees. “Awaiting your movement, though I’m afraid our extraction target’s already neutralized,” adds Q with a grin.

“Blimey,” Edward whispers. “This is exciting.”

Q gives his dad a wry look. It’s sweet how genuinely interested he is in their work. His curiosity and enthusiasm never push for more than they - though mostly Bond - can say. His paternal worry shows through a little, though, when either mention that James was in the field, or that Q had to sit - and has to, still - and use only his words and his mind to help them both.

It’s extraordinary that they have this, together. It yet seems so unlikely. And it’s remarkable the family they have built, and how much stronger it can grow.

“Next time,” James says, turning to Edward to finish a conversation begun in the other room. “I will tell you of Reykjavik.”

“Edward,” Amelia chastens him, and he shrugs, smiling.

“I don't ask anything that could endanger him,” he reasons.

“How would you know?”

Edward considers this a moment. “Well, if it might, I imagine he wouldn’t answer.”

James gives a shrug of allowance for this, and they share a laugh. Quick kisses are exchanged between all, and Q thanks them - over and over - as he swallows down the rest of his now-cool tea. With Emma against his hip, and James laden with her accoutrements, they load up the Aston and head for home.

She should be in the car seat, Q knows, he’s read enough studies about their efficacy compared to exactly what he’s doing now in the instance of an accident, but he can’t bring himself to let her go. She curls little in his lap, sleeping heavy against his chest. Bond, to his credit but not Q’s surprise, drives below the speed limit and uses his indicators at every turn.

“I’m glad we came back,” Q grins, sheepish. “My whole chest just aches right now.”

“It’s all your stealth smoking.”

“Shut up,” he laughs. “It’s a good ache.”

Q ducks his head and traces his nose against Emma’s unruly copper curls. When he breathes in, the scent of her overwhelms him, enough to prickle his skin and tighten his heartbeat. All at once he’s overcome with an intensity of love and desire to protect that dizzies him. He would move the world for her.

He could, too.

He stays that way, breathing in her sweet milky smell, until they pull up at the house. James makes quick work of the bags, theirs and Emma’s, while Q carefully works through their intricate system of locks. Emma dozes soundly against him.

Inside, the cats greet them with chirps and trills, stretches and purring. Desmond demands attention from Q and Emma both, and follows them to Emma’s room to join her in bed as soon as she’s laid down.

Q leaves the door open while they work quietly downstairs, just in case. James doesn't set the kettle as he usually would, just as tired and just as heavy with relief as Q is to be home early.

“Still out?”

“Like a light,” Q confirms, moving to help James unpack their food into the fridge.

“I think we're not far off the same,” James tells him softly, kissing Q's hair as he passes him to start sorting through Emma's things. He crouches over the bags to sift through what needs to be set away and what can remain until morning, another day off for them both to spend with Emma. Warm hands settle to his shoulders, slender fingers curling strong. He bows his head and groans beneath Q’s gentle massage.

“You know that you forgot something, don’t you?”

James blinks, his bliss briefly interrupted. He parts his lips and tries to think back to Q’s parents house, to the flat. He thinks back to the car and shakes his head.

“You didn’t carry me over the threshold,” Q muses.

“We’re not married yet,” Bond laughs. “And you’re not a bride.”

“Nitpicking,” decides Q. “It seems the sort of thing that should be done. You know, for tradition’s sake.”

“I’m not certain there are traditions like that for two men marrying, darling. And we’re not married yet,” he says again, amused.

Q grins, sinking his arms around Bond’s neck and crouching behind him. “Well I’m not carrying you,” he answers, nuzzling in sleepy contentment between Bond’s shoulder blades as Peter slips into the agent’s lap.

James just laughs, warmed by the idea that Q would try. It’s too late in the evening to get into discussions about weddings, ceremonies, people… in truth, James doesn’t know what he wants with regard to all that. He wants Q, to be with him and to live together, and he has that. Even without a ring he had that. He turns his head to rub his cheek against Q’s curls.

“I can carry you upstairs,” James offers, both of them snorting before Q schools his expression to listen carefully. “And right into bed where - do you know what we’ll do there?”

“What will we do there?”

“Sleep like the bloody dead,” James laughs, turning more to kiss Q and hold Peter gently as he guides them both to stand. “Like the responsible adults we are. We have to host the arrival of a toy horse tomorrow. And tell our daughter about how she will learn to ride a real one, if she’s good.”

"And if she's safe," Q says, laughing as James tries to move him. "No, no. Like this." He moves to Bond's back again, arms around his neck, standing on his toes.

"So much for tradition," murmurs Bond. He relinquishes Peter to the floor and once bent, Q hops up lightly and snares his legs around James' hips. Clutching to him piggyback-style, Q snorts laughter against the nape of his neck. He tries to keep quiet, as Bond stands again and seeks through the house to shut off all the lights. Q tries to keep quiet because Emma's sleeping, and his own laughter makes him even more unwieldy to support.

It doesn't work very well.

"I'm glad you're enjoying this," James sighs as he regards the stairs, and slowly trudges upward. Q sputters giggling against his shoulder.

"I think I'm - I'm - yes."

"Yes?"

"Enjoying this," he grins. "And also very, very tired."

“If I didn’t know you so well, I would also ask if you happened to be drunk,” James tells him playfully, lightly bouncing Q against his back. “Just imagine: ‘Bond’, you could say, ‘Quinlan Bond’.”

“I would never,” Q declares, as they make it to the landing and he leans over to turn the stair light off as well. He snorts when James bounces him again. “I would never in public,” he relents.

“It does have a ring to it,” James agrees. “That or James Holt, I’ve yet to decide.”

James gently sets Q to the floor and turns to hold his face in his hands and kiss him. He can taste Q’s smile, his soft blush at the mention of their names merging in such a way. It will be lovely, whatever they choose.

“Blowing my cover under the guise of romance,” Q muses, looping his arms around Bond’s neck. “Very clever.”

“It’s hardly a cover, darling, you’ve just never told anyone.”

“That’s how good I am,” Q grins, nose wrinkling when he’s swept up to his toes and carried towards the bedroom. “Besides, if you’re going to be blowing anything, I’d rather it be -”

“Hush,” laughs James, and he kisses his quartermaster soundly to the bed. They tangle their clothes halfway off, bodies and mouths brushing warmly together. Q finally escapes to bare himself down to his pants, tossing his clothes to the floor with little mind. As Bond strips down to the same, although with far more refined and elegant movements, Q wriggles beneath the sheets and splaying his limbs wide, groans.

“Oh,” he sighs. “Oh, it’s bloody wonderful.”

“Damn near orgasmic, if I’m to believe you,” James tells him, but it’s hardly chastisement, as when he, too, falls into bed it is with a similarly sexual noise of delight. “Christ, could a bed feel any better than this?”

“The one at your place isn’t bad,” Q assures him, curling up a little to give James room to move. “Simply not this one. This one is entire ours, and utterly perfect, lumps in the mattress and all.”

“We could get another,” James mumbles into the pillow. “A new one. Orthopedic mattress or… whatever.”

“Don’t be absurd, we would have to break it in then,” Q tells him, and when James lifts a brow and smiles, he can’t help but laugh. He inches closer, once they settle. Legs stretched long and only his brow against Bond’s shoulder, he touches kisses there, sleepy small things, limbs already growing heavy. Bond tucks his arm beneath and lets his hand rest in Q’s hair.

Neither remember when they fall asleep.

But it would be hard to forget the way they awaken.

“Daddy.”

Bond grunts, attempting to turn to his side, but before he can, there’s a weight that clambers onto his chest. It’s Q that blinks blearily to life first, and takes in their daughter, perched feline on his agent.

Husband.

Something. Q draws a breath and grinds a hand against his eye. Emma’s attention snaps to him instead.

“Daddy,” she says. “There’s someone at the door.”

James sets his hands on either side of Emma’s little form and strokes up and down her arms. “Is there now?”

“They keep ringing the doorbell, and the camera doesn’t show anyone scary so I said we would open the door soon, so he wouldn’t go away.”

“What time is it?” Q mumbles, finally finding his bearings.

“A quarter to eleven,” Emma enunciates carefully. “I didn’t want to wake you up so I was playing with the cats downstairs, but now someone’s at the door.”

“Good girl,” James tells her. “Never open the door to anyone unless we’re there.” He gives Q a narrow-eyed look of amusement and snares Emma close until she giggles. “Shall we go see who it is?”

“Yeah!”

As a family, they all troop downstairs once the dads have managed into their sleep pants and loose undershirts. The cats meander by the door as the man still waits beyond it, as asked by Emma’s polite request to do so. James licks his lips and works the locks carefully before opening the door to him and wishing him a good morning.

“A delivery for a Miss E. Bond?” He says.

Their little girl barrels almost directly into James’ legs, grabbing hold as she peeks past. She squints, suspicious. “Is the ‘E’ for Emma?”

“It just says ‘E’,” the man says with a smile.

“That’s us,” James answers, accepting the parcel slip to sign. Beside the man is a sizeable box. Emma tries to dodge past but Bond calmly extends a leg to keep her at bay.

“Is that my horse?” She exclaims, pointing at the man. “You there. Is that my horse in that box?”

“Thanks much,” the man says to James, watching the little combatant with a mild surprise. He lifts his fingers a nod for the tip James passes him. “Need any help getting it in?”

“Ladybug’s not an it,” Emma scolds him. “Ladybug’s a lady.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the delivery man amends, catching James’ eye and his smile as he does. “Shall I help Ladybug inside?”

“Yes,” Emma decides. “Please.”

“Very well.”

Both he and James work the large box through their front door and as the man tips his hat to the two of them, Emma sends him a salute and a smile. When the door closes, she walks around the box curiously, guiding her dark eyes up to James who stands at her side. 

“Should we get her out?”

“Yes, I think she’d like to be out of the box,” James agrees.

With Q watching calmly from the kitchen, a few letters in his hand from the mail they missed on Saturday, James and Emma get to work peeling the tape and stickers from the box to allow it to be opened. Bit by bit, with carefully guidance from James, Emma works free the bubble wrap that holds her horse carefully secure in the box, and smiles.

The toy stands as tall as Emma herself, with a white star on her forehead and a creamy mane. Emma reaches out a hand to stroke down her nose and turns to James.

“Will she grow up?”

“She’s already grown up,” James says, and Q sips his tea to hide his smile at the strained note of hope in Bond’s voice. “She’s just a very little horse.”

“I see,” Emma agrees. “It’s alright, Ladybug. I’m not very big either.”

Bond stands again, stretching out a pinch from having slept in the same position all night, and when he eases, a mug of tea is pressed to his hand, and a kiss to his cheek. “Emma,” Q asks. “Isn’t there something we’re forgetting?”

“Yes. She’ll need a saddle and a bridle.”

“Something we’re forgetting to say,” he amends.

Emma looks up at her fathers, then back at Ladybug. She huffs a breath. “I’m sorry that they put you in a horrid box, Ladybug. It won’t happen again.” Q lifts a brow, and with a grin, she runs at them both, colliding with their legs and squeezing both at once. They balance their tea with aplomb. “Thank you, daddy. She’s lovely.”

Q rests a hand in Emma’s hair and lifts a brow at James who sips his tea and for a moment deliberately ignores him. When Emma peels away to get close to Ladybug again, Q this time stepping in to help her free the horse entirely, James curls his legs and gracefully takes a seat on the cool floor.

“Horses would find it hard to live in the garden,” James tells her, as Emma reaches into the box to pick up the hair brush that came with the horse to slowly and gently stroke it down her mane. “But they really like living in stables, further out from the city where they have more room to run.”

Emma turns to him and listens, though she says nothing and asks nothing. She isn’t disappointed by her gift, she never has been, by any. She’s simply a very pensive child, entirely Q’s daughter in that regard. James sets his tea down and lets his wrists hang over his knees.

“We could go, if you like, to the stables to see them.”

“The real horses?” Emma asks.

“The real horses. Ponies, while you’re still little.”

“Could we pet them?”

“We could,” James says, looking up at Q. “And give them a carrot if their caretaker says it’s okay. And maybe even see if we could get someone to teach you how to ride one.”

There’s a missed stroke of the brush. It rests unmoving, and if they didn’t know her so well, they’d wonder if she heard them correctly when the brush moves again, a little slower. Bond’s seen too many times how Q’s fingers click across his keys even when he’s been surprised with an inch of his life. It’s remarkable to see the same in her.

“We could ride them,” she asks.

“We could. Well, you and I. Your dad’s going to sit this one out.”

“We could go and ride the horses.”

“Yes. You can learn how to care for them, different ways to ride them -”

“Daddy,” she interjects, turning on him with enormous eyes. “We have to go now.”

James smiles wider and gently holds his hands up to placate her. “Not now, love, not right now. We will have to go on the weekend.”

“But we just had the weekend!”

“I know,” James tells her. “But your father will kill me if we go to see the horses without him. Even though I have much more experience with them than he does.”

“I hardly want to know what experiences of runaway ponies you have,” Q huffs, but his smile is genuine. “I would rather we were both there. We see different things in different situations. I look for safety and you -”

“And me,” James agrees, leaning back on his hands now, huffing when Emma sits heavily into his lap. “Only in the minor leagues with such things.”

“More like you’ve never set foot on the pitch,” snorts Q, dropping comfortably into the couch where he is immediately walked upon by Turing. He adjusts to accommodate.

“Have you ridden a horse?” Emma asks. Bond nods.

“I have. Many times.”

“What did it look like? Your horse,” she says. “Was it very pretty?”

“He was a dapple grey,” James tells her. “I called him Blue.”

“That’s silly.”

“It is silly,” James agrees. “I was silly when I was young. He and I rode very well together. I got good at doing your hair because I used to do his hair for shows.”

“What kind of shows?”

James smiles at her and brings up a hand to stroke through messy ginger curls. He cannot remember at all what her mother looks like, and it doesn’t matter. To him, everything that is not his own, is Q’s in her.

“Very fancy riding shows,” James explains. “Very difficult and very poncy things. I had a lot of fun.”

Q squints at him. “You did dressage?”

“I did. We were a good team, Blue and I.”

“You,” Q says again. “You, in a top-hat and tails? On a horse? I looked up pictures and it all seems utterly…” He stops himself, with Emma watching, and says instead of the choice taunting perched on his tongue, “Delightful. It seems utterly delightful to imagine you doing that.”

Bond raises a brow, and Emma giggles. The mere presence of a curse in the room is enough to delight her.

“I’m sure Emma would like to see pictures,” Q adds, concealing his smile behind his mug. “Do you have any?”

“I don’t think I’ve any left,” James admits, delighted by Q’s light eyes narrowing. “They were all kept in Scotland.”

“But when you ride with me you will dress up again right?” Emma asks. James just leans up and kisses her forehead. 

“Let’s just get you some lessons first, kiddo,” he says. “And remember, that you will have to look after the horse as well as learning to ride her. It’s very important that you know how to groom her and check her hooves. A horse isn’t a toy.”

“Like Desmond,” Emma says sagely.

“Just like Desmond,” James agrees.

She pauses, and with a wrinkled nose and a grin, she whispers, “Desmond’s a bit like a toy.”

“Don’t tell your father that,” James whispers in return.

“I can hear you both, you know,” Q says with a squint. He is bedecked in cats, who have missed them only a little less than Emma did. Peter lays on the back of the couch behind him. Turing sits coiled sleek and small in his lap. Desmond splays in a puddle of fur against his side.

Emma giggles and gives James a squeeze, little arms around his neck. She pushes away then and - giving Ladybug a pat on the head - continues over to Q. Desmond trills at her and she rubs her face against his head. His purr erupts in a happy rumble. Peter, yet untouched, spontaneously echoes it with a purr of his own. Q regards the latter with bewilderment, then turns back to Emma.

“There will be a lot of work involved,” he says. “You’ll need to listen to everything your teacher tells you, okay? And what your daddy tells you, but foremost your teacher.”

“I will,” she grins, laying her cheek against Desmond as if he were a pillow. “I’m going to be a policeman. I’ll ride a horse through the park and tell people to get a move on.”

James laughs, then, reaching for his tea again and watching his family curl up on the couch. Peter jumps down to walk softly over Emma, one paw deliberately pushing against her hair before he steps over her and sits on Turing in Q’s lap. Their smallest cat yowls his displeasure, but beyond a displeased gaze, offers no retaliation but to shift further across Q’s legs to make room.

“So,” James says. “A whole day with your daddies home. What should we do?”

“Fancy pancakes!” Emma says, sitting up again but keeping her hands in Desmond’s soft fur.

“Fancy pancakes, got it,” James nods, turning next to Q. “And you?”

“We could walk over to the park,” he suggests. “Go and see if there’s any little fishes in the brook.”

“And catch them?” Emma asks.

“We can try,” Q grins. He leans over, disrupting the stacked cats in his lap who slip surly to the floor. Giving Emma a squeeze, he kisses her hair and moves to stand. “Right. Shall we help daddy with breakfast?”

“Ladybug needs breakfast too.”

“She does,” agrees Q. “Let’s take her out to the garden while daddy starts fancy pancakes.” As he stands, and Bond does in turn, Q laughs as he’s pulled close and they share a sweetly chaste kiss. Emma giggles and declares it ‘ew’ but Q and Bond simply smile, exchanging a warm nuzzle. James finds, however, that as Q leans away, an empty mug is pressed to his palm.

Q grins, nose wrinkling. “Bring me out another, would you?”

Before Bond can protest, Q’s got Ladybug walking across the floor, and Emma skipping gleefully beside.

James takes up the box and folds it down, he tosses the bubble wrap and kicks the stray tape to the wall so he can gather it later and the cats don’t find it. In the kitchen, he sets the kettle again and gets what he needs from the fridge and pantry. Fancy pancakes, in truth, are nothing more than pancakes with all the toppings. Bacon and banana, toasted walnuts, fresh fruit and sticky heavy cream. A smorgasbord of delights for everyone at the table to mix and match their favourite things.

James is just finishing the batter when the kettle clicks and he fills his mug and Q’s again to take it outside.

Emma is sitting astride her horse, hand in the air declaring that anyone in the park who isn’t there to have fun has to leave, because they’re causing a scene. In the grass, just a little long from mismanagement, Q lies and watches her, arms above his head and smile on his lips. His knee is drawn up and he still looks sleepy. He isn’t wearing his glasses and he looks, to James, like the most gentle and lovely thing in the world.

“Daddy,” Emma declares, and Bond smiles.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

It’s always a demand when she calls them daddy, an insistence, whether it’s to ask for something or tell them she loves them. She’s adopted Q’s near-insolent command, though Q himself has scarcely used it at home since she started to attune to their words. The biology of their familial bond hardly matters. She is as much Quinn’s daughter as his, and it aches wonderfully in his chest to see his quartermaster reborn within their child.

Emma grins, eyes narrow. “Are you having fun?”

“You’re not allowed to be here if you aren’t,” Q advises him, smiling sleepily as he rubs his arm across his eyes.

James hands Q his mug as Quinn sits up to take it, arms resting over his raised knees. Bond goes to Emma next, and lifts his hand in a salute. Q’s glad he’s drinking when James does it, as it serves to mute the sound he’d make otherwise.

“Captain Bond,” James says. “Reporting for fun.”

“Very good sir,” Emma tells him, and leans over so James can kiss her forehead. “Will you stay out here?”

“Alas, my dear madam, the pancakes will not fancy themselves,” James tells her, and Emma nods sagely her understanding. “But, perhaps once I have helped them on their way, we could have a picnic on the porch.”

“Yeah!” Emma says, smile bright and wide. Another kiss is pressed to her forehead and she turns back to sit on Ladybug properly, kicking her feet gently against her sides to make her shift in the grass. James gives Q a look and winks, smiling before he returns inside.

“Bond,” Q says, just as he reaches the door. “One more thing.”

There’s that tone again, that clip. So subtle that no one who isn’t James would hear it, so entirely discreet and yet capable of sending a thrill shivering down his spine. He lets it pass, and turns with a smile to regard his quartermaster, splayed languid once more in the grass in no more than sleep pants and an undershirt.

“Yes, Q?”

His quartermaster grins. “I love you.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s a good thing that Emma’s with her grandparents for the day, and not at home to hear the admittedly creative string of curses that Q unspools in the center of the living room, sending the cats scattering._
> 
> _Bond regards him, and then removes his shoes. “Well, I thought that went rather well.”_

Normally alive with shouts and laughter, the hallway in which they sit is now host to soft murmurations and a pervasive quiet as they await their meeting. The chairs are slightly too small, and every few minutes, James crosses his legs the other way. Q sits damn near motionless, feet flat on the polished floor. His gaze is held by the drawings lining the pale blue walls, man and beast and tree and house scrawled from crayon to butcher paper or smeared with watercolors. Against his chest, done up in a nice navy and grey check jacket with a smart steel-colored tie, he clutches his laptop and several substantial files of paperwork.

“Almost like the first time we met,” Bond muses, voice low. “I like the art here more.”

This isn’t the sort of place that’s simply glorified babysitting. This is the sort of place that one needs to attend to even garner a second look from the best schools in higher years. It’s the sort of place with students whose last names regularly appear in headlines, a waiting list made useless by demand, and for which application preparation begins while the child is still in utero.

Which means they’re behind.

Terribly behind.

“Quinn.”

He startles a little, blinking wide-eyed at James beside him. “Sorry,” he manages, amidst the quiet din of assistants murmuring into Blackberries, here in lieu of parentage. “Were you saying something?”

“I said it reminds me of sitting with you in the art gallery.”

“Ah,” Q says after a moment. His smile staggers across his lips and falters just as quickly. James lifts a brow and draws a breath, but before he can speak, Q raises a hand. “It isn’t just primary school. It will set a standard for the kinds of places she’ll attend forever onward.”

“Tell me it’s not your thesis you’ve brought in to show them how clever you are. You’re not the one applying.”

At this, Q’s eyes narrow. It’s a bare twitch, but behind his glasses, they gleam with a secret smile. He leans close to James, careful to ensure that no one’s looking, and lowers the stack to his lap. He pushes the top file slightly nearer, and as James opens it, he sees within dossier after dossier, all teachers or staff at the school. Photos of them. Photos of them with their families. Fine details of their lives and histories.

This time, it’s Bond that’s speechless.

“I used the resources readily available to me,” Q explains, snapping the file closed and bringing the whole bundle back to his chest.

“Fuck’s sake, Quinn -”

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t swear, they’ll hear you and think we’re uncouth. It’s a security concern,” explains Q, though he’s hardly able to contain his smug delight. “No different than preliminary background checks on a hotel staff or museum guards or any other potential area of compromise.”

James blinks at him. Then he blinks again. “Darling, Emma’s not yet six.”

“Yes, and it isn’t her I’m looking into.”

“A mere security check on the school in general would have been enough. I ran one,” James tells him. “This,” he says as he taps the folder that Q holds tighter against himself with a huff. “This is excessive, love.”

“It’s for her safety.”

“For your peace of mind,” James corrects him, lifting an eyebrow when Q opens his mouth to argue. “It’s a good place. That’s all we really need to know.”

“We should have started planning before she was born.”

“Darling, neither of us knew she was going to be born,” James points out. They square off for a moment, Q frowning and James trying to hold back a smile, when the door to the office opens before them and a woman steps forward, tall and blonde, dressed in a pencil skirt and a blouse that froths at her throat.

“Good morning,” she says. “Mr. Bond?”

“Yes,” both say at once, and then James ducks his head and turns to look at Q beside him, allowing him the lead. He hardly has to.

Q is up in an instant, paperwork nestled in one arm and equally full bag slipping from his shoulder. He thrusts a hand forward with a note of nervous laughter. “Quinlan. Bond. Quinlan Bond,” he says, “or it will be once the paperwork’s done. Holt for now. Ms. Lewis, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she responds, with a quick shake. When James stands a moment later, he shakes her hand in return, suppressing the reflexive impulse to wink as he does.

“James Bond,” he says.

“A pleasure. Please do come in.”

The classroom is well-lit, bright and spacious with windows overlooking a verdant inner courtyard. Quinn mentally notes this as a potential hazard, glancing back when James closes the door behind them. It clicks, held solid, with an inner lock whose make Q knows to be particularly resistant to impact. Good.

James notices only that the space looks welcoming. It doesn’t feel like a prison - it feels like a prep school should, with the space for children to grow and become themselves, guided but not hindered. He relaxes a lot more than Q does, when they are guided to take seats before the teacher’s desk.

“I understand you’re interested in enrolling Emma into the school,” Ms. Lewis says, taking a seat and carefully pushing her chair back in against the desk before her. “I will advise, merely as a precautionary measure, that the wait list for entrances without the prerequisites is rather a long one.”

Held by lottery, if James recalls correctly, from half-listening to Q fret about it the night before, and the week before that and the week before that.

“We understand,” James says, before Q can interject. He smiles and holds it. “We just want the best start for her.”

“Of course,” she answers, with a smile that settles James and narrows Q’s eyes just a little. She turns a page in a notebook, prefilled with questions and lines for answer. “I’m certain you’ve done your research -”

“We have,” Q says.

“All parents do before attempting application,” she responds with another smile. “But for the sake of ensuring we’re all on the same page, today you’re meeting with me, as the primary teacher for the entering class. I’ll review our conversation with the staff, and if approved, we’ll invite you back in again with Emma. If all goes well, and our requirements are met, and,” she says, with pointed emphasis, “there is space available, we’ll send out invitations to join our programme a month before classes begin. That will give everyone ample time to acquire the necessary uniforms, textbooks, and other materials.”

Quinn watches her set pen to paper, unshouldering his bag and setting his papers aside on the floor. He leans forward to sit attentively - precariously, really - on the edge of his seat. If he’d known there was a questionnaire, he’d have filled it out already. If only he’d thought ahead, he could at least have reviewed the questions themselves. It isn’t fair to spring this sort of thing on someone, when he could so easily have simply cracked their undoubtedly civilian-level network security and found the forms…

“Tell me a little about yourselves,” Ms. Lewis says.

Q draws a breath, shoulders straightening as he does. Bond watches him in an instant become the brilliant young university student trying to prove himself in tutorials, aggressively nervous and nervously aggressive. “I grew up in Harrow,” he begins. “My parents are both solicitors. I attended Sussex, Eton, and Oxford - Magdalene College - where I read computer science, although truth be told I preferred to focus on engineering hardware. You know, as one does when they’re at Magdalene rather than Christ Church,” he says with a sudden laugh, snorting.

James allows a smile to cover for the lack of one from Ms. Lewis, who watches Quinn a moment more before directing her eyes to James next.

“A slightly more varied upbringing,” he offers lightly. “I was born and raised in Scotland before I attended Eton. The rest of my education was completed in Scotland and during my service with the Royal British Navy.”

“And your parents?” Ms. Lewis asks.

“Unfortunately no longer with us,” James says, inclining his head to accept her predictable and indifferent condolences. “My father was a lawyer, my mother an interpreter.”

“So your household is bilingual?”

“Emma is picking up French very quickly,” James assures her.

“And she slips to German with around the same frequency,” Q adds. He pauses, glancing not to Ms. Lewis, who dutifully takes this down, but to James. “Did I tell you I overheard her speaking Russian to the cats the other day?”

“We’ve been working on it,” James smiles.

“She’s terribly clever, our Emma. Precocious hardly seems the word for it. She was making leaps of logic when she was three that would more developmentally suit a child double that age,” Q says.

“We’re still talking about you,” Ms. Lewis reminds them, though not at all unkindly. “What do you both do for a living?”

“I’m retired,” James says. “After twenty-odd years of military service and a rank of Commander, it’s been a welcome break. It also allowed me to spend time at home with Emma once her surrogate left her to our keeping.”

“I see,” she answers, brows lifting in a faint expression of surprise. Q sees her take down Bond’s rank and makes a mental note for himself to call him that in bed later as thanks. “And you, Mr. Holt?”

Q swallows so hard his throat clicks. “I work for the government,” he manages.

“A political position, or merely support?”

“Neither,” he says, voice tilting to a nervous question mark at the end. “I - I suppose the latter, more than the former. I’m not a - a councilman or anything,” he says with a sudden laugh that dies quickly. “Nor a desk clerk. Although there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Your title, then,” she suggests.

Q’s laugh rises and falls again. “To be entirely honest, Ms. Lewis,” he finally says, “I’m not at liberty to disclose the particulars of what I do. Title, department, agency, or nature of work.”

He shrugs a shoulder and as it slumps back down, he sees Emma’s bright future smothered to dust in his hands. That’s it. It’s good as done. He nearly curses, but instead holds it behind his lips in an attempted smile.

Though Ms. Lewis appears - rightfully - curious and concerned by this revelation, the rest of the questions are innocuous and amicable. James speaks at length with her about Emma’s interests, the makeup of her personality, her energy and cleverness. Quinn says very little, but to add in the occasional anecdote. When Ms. Lewis asks if they have any questions for her, he brightens enough to ask about the particulars of their academics and extracurriculars, if only to punish himself with all the things he’ll not be able to provide for her because of miserable MI6. They shake hands genially, when their time is up.

The ride home is uncharacteristically silent.

It’s a good thing that Emma’s with her grandparents for the day, and not at home to hear the admittedly creative string of curses that Q unspools in the center of the living room, sending the cats scattering.

Bond regards him, and then removes his shoes. “Well, I thought that went rather well.”

“Bollocks,” Q spits, as if the word is the last bit of a bad taste in his mouth. He drops his paperwork and bag to the couch, and himself beside them. Pushing his fingers against his eyes, he sighs. “I didn’t even remember to ask her why she was in China last year.”

James watches him fondly a moment before checking the door and moving to join Q in the living room. The cats are slowly returning now that the outburst is over, sneaking behind the couch and up to James’ legs to wind between them. He crouches on the floor before his partner and sets his knuckles against Q’s chin to lift it.

“That is hardly pertinent,” he tells Q softly. “Her personal life is allowed to be as shrouded in mystery as our own.”

“She won’t trust it,” Q huffs out. “She won’t trust a word of what I’ve said because I couldn’t give her a straight answer. I should have just stuck with being a bloody clerk.”

“Darling, you’re hardly that.”

“At least then she would have had a word to associate with me. Something I do, a guaranteed job rather than someone faffing about with words. I’m the only one in the household who brings in money. She hardly needs to know of our copious savings. What if my lack of answer puts Emma’s entire future in jeopardy?”

“It won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I went to some school whose name I can’t recall and for a while,” James smiles, “I was considered the best double-oh the service had. And you didn’t go to some poncy kindergarten either, and look at you now.”

“But I did go to a poncy primary school,” Q reminds him. “Which put me first in line into a poncy public school, which damn well may have - and likely bloody did - make a difference in getting one of four computer science admissions into Magdalene.”

“I’m certain that being a damned genius and a devoutly hard worker had nothing at all to do with that,” smiles James.

“There are plenty of people out there who are clever and work hard,” Q says. “Names matter, Bond. These things matter. Not to me, I couldn’t care less. She could go to - ugh,” he groans. “She could go to a Montessori school if she wanted, but these things matter to people who make decisions.”

“If you couldn’t care less, darling, why have you gone pale?”

“Because - because in an instant,” Q says, wide-eyed. “In an instant, I’ve ruined it. My pride ruined all of it. She damn well deserves to be there, but if she’s not? The public schools aren’t going to look at her, and then what’ll happen to Oxford? How will she be happy without having the best opportunities laid out for her?”

Q slumps so far down into the couch, huffing against his hands, that he’s nearly prone. Were it not for James kneeling before him, he’d have slid right off the couch.

“She’s going to wind up working at Tesco,” he mutters into his hands. “Wondering, ‘what could have been if my father hadn’t cocked it all up for me?’”

James can’t help it; he laughs. Bright and warm and fond, he laughs, letting go of Quinn to set his hands to his knees and lever himself up. James draws a hand through Q’s hair and bends to take up Desmond to put in his lap, then leaves him on the couch to put the kettle on.

“What do you possibly believe you’ve cocked up?” James asks him, over the sound of the water boiling. It takes Q a while to answer, perhaps because he didn’t hear, perhaps because he is too busy stroking behind Desmond’s ears until he’s vibrating with happy squeaky purrs.

“You told her you work for the government,” James says. “You explained that the information could not be disclosed. Following on from the impressive school record you gave her, she would hardly jump to the conclusion that you work a dead end job to make ends meet.”

“She could.”

“She’s not stupid, Q, she works in a school you wish to send your daughter to.”

Q sighs, but doesn’t argue that. James takes down two mugs and pops a tea bag into each, waiting for the water to boil before pouring it in and letting the tea steep. He makes his way back to the couch and moves Q’s laptop and papers carefully to the floor before sitting down and dragging his partner against him.

“You’ve ruined nothing for her, I guarantee it.”

Q makes a fussy sound, stretching down to take up his mug from where James set it on the floor. He folds his hands around it and takes a stabilizing sip, settling into the grounding, firm strength of Bond against his back. Familiar fingers stroke through his hair, and Q tilts his head to nuzzle against James’ neck.

“I just want her to have opportunities, you know? As many as we can manage. And if she has them and doesn’t use them, or wants something else, then - then at least she had options,” he sighs. “You were wonderful.”

“Past tense?”

“And present,” Q says. “Thank you for the tea.”

“It was only a conversation. It’s hardly in our hands anyway, and barely even in Ms. Lewis’ hands considering there’s a bloody lottery of potential candidates.”

“But you were charming,” Q tells him. “Effortlessly so. Anything that might have been less than optimal glossed over quickly, your achievements casually presented. I should just send you in alone next time. You’re far better at this than I am.”

“No, I couldn’t have done it without you,” James tells him. “Who would have had all the files on every single employee from the principal to the janitorial staff if not for you?”

Q gently shoves his elbow back into James’ ribs and James laughs. He strokes Q’s hair from his forehead and kisses him there, nuzzling after to make his point.

“You are the best father that kid could hope for,” James tells him. “Level-headed and calm and far too bloody clever. We could homeschool her and she would still pass the entrance exams into Oxford with no trouble.”

“We can’t homeschool her, she would hate us for it,” Q laughs. 

“A lot of kids who get homeschooled enjoy it,” James points out. “Some say they never at all regret not going to school as other kids did.”

“You’re being a shit.”

“I am being a shit,” James laughs. “Entirely. No, she needs to go to a co-educational school where she can mingle and learn and grow into the incredible human being she will be.”

Q’s silence speaks volumes. So does the movement of his bottom lip between his teeth, sucked and held there. So does the low, dubious hum that he only quiets with an equally telling sip of tea.

“God,” laughs Bond. “That look strikes terror into me.”

“What look?” Q asks, shrugging.

“That bloody look, the one that comes just before, ‘So it appears there was a miscalculation, and you don’t have thirty minutes. You have thirty seconds’. That look.”

“It’s only…”

“Here it comes.”

“Co-ed?” Q asks, laughing. “Really, 007.”

“Really.” Q makes another of those sounds and James lifts an eyebrow at him. “She should know how to interact with both genders of people her age. What will happen when she goes to Oxford and finds herself surrounded by men, when she has never dealt with them in youth before?”

“The same as what happened when I went to Oxford from an all-boy’s school,” Q points out.

“Fall head first into debauchery and mischief?”

“Avoid the opposite gender,” Q says clearly, unamused yet entirely amused by James. “I did very well only speaking rarely to my female classmates. I passed at the top of my class. No distractions.”

“Q.”

“Several distractions, but those I could control.”

“As will she,” James reasons. “When schooled in a co-educational atmosphere.”

“I simply think it’s prudent to minimize the potential for distraction,” Q says. “Why add more things to be concerned about than already exist? She’ll better be able to focus on her schoolwork, rather than… things that aren’t schoolwork.”

“Like you?” Bond asks, brow raised.

“Yes,” Q answers, wary. “Like me.”

“Because surely you, at a same-gendered school, never once committed any acts that would go against school rules. Surely being surrounded by other boys left you pure as the driven snow, focused solely on your schoolwork.”

Q laughs, snorting against the side of his hand with which he tries to muffle the sound. “James…”

“No, never once were you tempted to skive off from study to snog other boys in the library.”

“Piss off,” Q grins against his mug, squinting an eye closed when Bond nuzzles against his hair. “By then we’ll be able to ask what she wants, and take that into consideration. We’ll be fair, but firm. So long as she’s going to a good school, the rest is…” He sighs. “Negotiable.”

“An attitude of compromise,” says James, pleased. “That will help brace you when she decides to go to Cambridge.”

Q pales. Slowly, he turns to face Bond, drawing a knee up onto the couch, tea in one hand. His eyes widen, and he whispers, “You take that back.”

“It’s a perfectly respectable place, darling.”

“It is no such thing,” Quinn says, setting his mug down so he is more equipped to physically squirm to prove his point, should the need arise. “It is a terrible place that tries its damndest to appear respectable. Like Oxford.”

“She could end up going overseas to study,” James offers next, delighting in Q’s apparent discomfort regarding the entire idea. “I went to school in Geneva.”

“Oxford,” Q says again. “That is entirely non-negotiable.”

“What if she decides to be a starving artist?” James muses.

“Good lord, Bond.” Aghast, Q turns entirely, sitting on his knees between Bond’s legs and staring at him. “An artist, fine - I suppose - but...”

He squints, as James thins his lips to hold back the laughter now shaking him.

“You’re a shit,” Q whispers, taking James’ tea from him to set on the floor. Bond exclaims a mild dismay, but Q catches his hand before he can reach for it again, and holds his wrists together above his head. “You are an absolute shit, 007.”

“Don’t swear, they’ll think we’re uncouth.”

“You bloody well are, commander or otherwise,” laughs Q.

“Stand down, sailor,” James laughs, not trying to fight against Q but instead taking the kiss that is pushed against him. And another. And another. The tension that had plagued him on the drive home is gone, now, replaced with laughter and soft limbs. Q settles between James’ legs and holds him down with a hum, narrowing his eyes and freeing one hand to set his glasses properly to his nose again.

“She will thrive,” James assures him, tilting his head to rest against his shoulder. “No matter where she is.”

“I know.”

“But it could always help to check her place in the waiting list and move it up a notch.”

 

Q blinks. His eyes narrow as his grin widens. Against his chest, James can feel Q’s heart beat a little faster as he leans in to sweep a kiss across his cheek. The next is placed just beneath his ear. Q bites gently against his earlobe, suckling it with a hum before he whispers, “James Bond. It sounds as if you’re suggesting…”

“Conspiracy,” James murmurs, fingers curling against Q’s hands. “Espionage of the highest order, and the utmost importance.”

“It’s not as though we’re rigging her admission,” reasons Q, dragging another eager kiss against James’ cheek. “Simply correcting any potential displacement that occurred by my error.”

“One should always fix their mistakes.”

“One certainly should,” Q grins, pushing back from James to scramble for his computer. He winds up belly down, fingers outstretched, laughing helpless as Bond lays atop him. Rough fingers softly stroke his hair from the back of his neck, and hot lips chase their movement. “Let me go,” Q laughs, squirming delightedly. “I only want to check.”

Bond’s hand slides along his ribs, threatening to tickle, and Q gasps another helpless laugh against the sofa.

“Check, and pentest their security network,” he corrects.

“No,” James tells him. “Not today. Not now. We have had enough drama to last us the week and it’s only Monday.”

“All the more reason to -”

“Leave it for when you’re at work,” James tells him, “in case their system isn’t as spindly as you imagine and they have their own ways of checking who’s been messing around in there.”

Q snorts his disdain. “As if I wouldn’t have planned for that. As if a primary school’s using state-of-the-art bloody encryption that I’ve never seen before.”

“As if there weren’t better, more immediate uses of our time.”

At this, Q laughs outright, brash and a little smug. He stretches again for his laptop, just beyond his fingertips. “Nothing is more immediately pressing than our daughter’s… oh.”

In the space made open by his squirming, Bond slips a hand between Q’s body and the couch. Running his hand down his tie and his shirt, he stops just above his belt. Q curls his hand back to the couch, biting his lip in a grin.

“We’ve the house to ourselves, darling, for another two hours.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a penetration test in mind already,” Q responds, sly for a moment before snorting laughter at his own joke.

“God, you’re a bloody mess,” James tells him fondly, kissing his neck and making sure to leave a mark just above where Q’s collar will cover it. “I still haven’t forgiven you for the joke about the bloody car I left in Rome.”

Q giggles thinking about it and James takes the moment of weakness to flip him over, resting against him once more and kissing him to quiet.

“You have a choice, sir,” James tells him quietly. “Here, on the couch, half dressed as though we’re bloody teenagers in a rut.”

“Or?”

“Or upstairs in bed, your legs up around your ears as I eat you out.”

Q hooks his knees against James’ hips and pushes their groins together. His lips part at the contact, neither hard yet but well on their way. Fingers fanning through James’ hair, cupping his jaw to draw him close, Q whispers against his mouth, “Can I have both?”

“Is that what they taught you in your posh schools?” James teases. “How to have your cake and eat it, too?”

“No. It’s what I’m trying to teach you,” Q grins. “How to have my ass and -”

“Right,” interjects James. In an instant, he’s up with Q dragged from the couch. Slung laughing over his shoulder, he makes for the stairs. “Let’s put that lesson into action, shall we?”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Q twists as he’s grasped around the middle, and rather than retreat, he leans forward hard into Bond’s arms, arms around his neck. Their lips meet, sweeping softly together even as Q snorts against James’ cheek the remnants of his laughter. Risen to his toes, he lets his agent take his weight and drag him towards the couch._
> 
> _Emma’s owl_ hoos _in protest as they land upon it._

James stays only as long as Emma lets him. She takes in the situation, analyzes it as quickly as her father, before declaring: “You can go, daddy, I don’t need an extraction.”

So James goes.

He lingers in the doorway and watches her set her bag down and reach within for her colored pencils. He lingers and gives a smile and a wave when she looks up again. He goes only because her expression shifts subtly from delighted to gently concerned - so like Q that it’s adorable - and he doesn’t want to upset her on her first day.

He’s upset enough for the both of them.

Who knew James bloody Bond wouldn’t be able to handle sending his daughter off to preschool?

He drives slowly. He picks up coffee on the way because two cups in the morning weren’t enough and he hadn’t slept the night before anyway. He considers swinging by the office to talk to Q, but what good would that do either of them? He just goes home.

What he’s meant to do with his day - or at least the half of it that she’s gone - he hasn’t the foggiest after years of minding a growing daughter and a busy partner. He knows what he should do, of course. He should do laundry. Vacuum a bit. Clean Emma’s room when she’s not there to tell him he’s doing it wrong.

No, that he’ll save. She sounds so much like Q, looks so much like him - hands on her hips and everything - that he’d miss her even more were he to try it without her careful oversight.

For half a coffee, Bond simply sits in the Aston in the garage. Engine off but radio on, he listens to the morning news and tries to seek between the lines of script for deeper goings-on. Something to hang on and investigate. Something to make him feel useful again.

He listens through the football scores and then shuts that off, too.

James checks his watch on the way into the house. Five hours has never seemed so -

He stops, just inside the door. The cats aren’t at his feet. The distant smell of bergamot lingers. Bond’s eyes narrow.

“Bond.”

And there’s his answer, at the top of the stairs with his hand white-knuckled against the bannister, glasses slipping down his nose and gaze sharp.

“How is she?”

“Doesn’t need an extraction,” James repeats automatically, watching as Q hums, frowns - just like his daughter - and brings his tea to his lips to sip pensively. After a while he nods, a slow and deliberate thing, and pushes his glasses further up his nose with a bent knuckle.

“Right. Good.”

“Q.”

“Very good. As expected.”

“Darling, you’re usually knee deep in blueprints under a bridge at this time of day,” James ventures carefully.

“Not on days that I’m unwell, James,” he answers. “On days that I’m unwell, I am entitled to take leave until I feel healthy again. MI6 has a generous leave policy for sickness, as you might recall, having used it for your hangovers on numerous occasions - actually far exceeding the typical amount of allotted days and…”

“Q.”

“Yes, 007.”

“You’re not sick,” James tells him.

Q scoffs, pitching his hair back from his face with an imperious toss of his head before slowly descending the stairs. “I didn’t say I’m sick. I said that I’m unwell, which is entirely the truth. In fact, it’s building to a nausea very quickly, the longer you withhold vital information from me. I’d not be able to concentrate on any blueprints whatsoever on a day like this, and so my presence in Q Division would be nothing more than a distraction.”

“Withholding information!”

“Yes,” Q says as he stops at the bottom of the stairs, one striped-sock foot at a time. “Is she alright.”

James blinks at him, then he gently steps nearer and sets his arms over Q’s shoulder, a half-embrace to keep him steady and still, but stay far enough away to be seen.

“She’s very confident,” James admits. “She walked right on in there and let go of my hand and introduced herself to the teacher.”

“Oh, God,” Q sighs, and James is even more glad to have his arm around him because he swears the man - unflappable, relentless, driven Q - actually sways. “Did she - I don’t even want to ask.”

“Ask,” murmurs James, leaning near enough to nose against his hair, coffees still in hand.

“Did she cry? Lie to me if you have to,” he says quickly. “No, don’t. You’re an awful liar.”

James snorts softly and cradles Q even nearer. “She didn’t cry,” he tells him, no lying necessary. “She asked a lot of questions. Where to put her bag, if she could use her own pencils, if she could sit at the very front even though the table was occupied by another child already.”

Q makes a soft whining sound, and James laughs warmly again. “She waved me goodbye and made me promise not to be late in picking her up.”

“What have we done,” moans Q, helpless, and he buries his face against James’ shoulder. “She should have whatever table she wants. She should have every table. It’s absurd that she’d not be allowed just because someone else has sat there. It’s obviously important to her to be there, they probably don’t care at all.”

After this rush of little agonies, mumbled into James’ jacket, Q puts his free hand around Bond’s waist and huffs a long, tired sigh.

“Can’t we just… _not_ do this,” he asks, plaintive. “She’s smart enough already, isn’t she? Emma can be home-schooled until it’s time for Oxford. I’ll be ready to cope with it by then.”

“Who would teach her?”

“I would,” Q replies immediately. “Teaching has always been a viable career path for me -”

“You said you would die of boredom teaching.”

“Others, yes, but not Emma.” Q nuzzles closer to James and just continues talking, grateful that his agent has the strength for the both of them to stand there and hold them up. “She will excel beyond her years in mathematics and physics. I could revisit my books on biology and chemistry to be up to speed on the latest developments -”

“What about the rest?”

“You could teach her languages.”

“And the rest?”

“What else?” Q asks, pushing gently against James to see him properly. “What else, James? She rides those horrid terrifying beasts twice a week -”

“The horses,” James smiles.

“And she gets enough exercise playing rough with you, because you never listen to me to be gentle, so her physical education is certainly covered,”

James lifts a brow, trying to restrain a smile as his exasperated husband leans against him again.

Q pouts. He pouts and he huffs and he makes a small strangled sound against Bond’s shoulder and finally this too gives and he just sighs.

“I know. I know it’s because socialization is important, with children her own age and not just us, even if they do take her table.”

“Sweetheart, it wasn’t her table.”

Q lifts his head just enough to squint, before plowing comfortably against him again.

“I didn’t socialize with anyone until university and I’m fine.”

James moves one hand to take Q’s mug, careful to hold it alongside his own paper take-out cup, and set them both to the small table in the corridor. Then he sets both hands to Q’s cheek and strokes his skin, warming the softness beneath his eyes and smiling when Q finally manages one of his own.

“She’s such a brave girl,” James tells him. “Look at us both, as though the end of the world is nigh, and all she wants to know is who the boy is sitting at the front so she can make a new friend.”

“Or take his table.”

“Or that,” Bond allows with a laugh.

Q breathes in deep, watching the lines form around his partner’s eyes, the creases beside his mouth. For how many years together were those features as fleeting and rare as an eclipse? They come so readily now, so easily, and yet Q still finds himself in awe to see James so relieved of the pains that plagued him so.

“She’ll still need us,” Q says to him, but really, it’s as much for himself as anything. “They don’t teach judo in preschool. They don’t teach introductory programming.”

“They certainly do not,” James agrees, gently swaying in place and taking Q with him. “Nor do they teach dancing, proper carriage, decorum, cursive penmanship and how to make a proper cup of tea for oneself.”

“She’s too young for tea, yet,” Q snorts, and James agrees with a warm hum, slipping one hand up to the center of Q’s back, dropping the other to press his thumb to Q’s palm. “What are you doing?”

“Waltzing,” James tells him. “With my husband. Because our daughter started school today and it’s the most frightening thing either of us have ever faced.”

“We aren’t married yet,” Q sighs, fighting down a smile that becomes a laugh as he’s turned. He lets himself be lead, watching before him, against him, moving with him, the most beautiful man he’s ever known.

“We will be though, won’t we?”

“Are you asking?”

“I’ve just declared you my husband.”

“Not the same as asking,” Q says with a wrinkle in his nose, before he’s turned again and laughs. “Christ. We’ve saved the world together how many times, and half a day at preschool has ruined us.”

“I told you that she would be our most dangerous mission,” James reminds him, holding Q against him back to chest and nuzzling his neck. “Our most dangerous leak of information, the most precious of things we have ever cared for.”

“And we both willingly signed up for it,” Q sighs, leaning back against him.

“We did,” James replies, wrapping his arms around Q’s middle and holding him still as he slows their swaying. “And we will get used to this new curveball in our mission. Just as we will when she starts primary school.”

“Not for several years,” Q reminds him.

“And high school.” 

“God forbid.”

James laughs and when he kisses Q’s skin this time, his fingers curl to tickle against his sides, laughing when his quartermaster squirms and yelps against him, trying to get free. He doesn’t let Quinn squirm away so readily as that, though. Skilled with changing nappies and entertaining a child he might be, Bond’s not lost the quickness of muscle memory - in fact, it’s proved quite useful for intervening in a race towards the stairs, or ducking a thrown toy.

Q twists as he’s grasped around the middle, and rather than retreat, he leans forward hard into Bond’s arms, arms around his neck. Their lips meet, sweeping softly together even as Q snorts against James’ cheek the remnants of his laughter. Risen to his toes, he lets his agent take his weight and drag him towards the couch.

Emma’s owl _hoos_ in protest as they land upon it.

“We’ve got a critical situation, 007. Special Agent Hoo is in peril,” Q whispers, laid heavy atop his partner. “It’s off-mission, but you’re the only one capable of performing this extraction.”

“I tell that feathered bastard every day not to take on more than he can handle,” James mutters, squirming now to reach beneath himself and ease the poor half-stuffed owl. He’s been loved to death by his owner, restitched, his voicebox repaired by her parents. He’s a sad-looking thing, and at once a beacon of endless love and hope to all of them.

Silly thing.

James regards the owl for a moment before turning him to face Q.

“Agent Hoo has seen some shit,” he proclaims. “I don’t think he needs to see this to add to it.”

“It’s inappropriate,” Q agrees, somber, as Bond leans down to set Hoo to the floor, face down. Q leans over James and regards this putting-to-ground with very serious interest indeed, before nodding once, solemnly.

“Very good. He needs his rest. You, however,” Q purrs, slinking back atop his agent who is fighting fit. “You are overly caffeinated and need to burn off quite a bit of energy.”

“Yes, with laundry and vacuuming and -”

“Pinning me to the bloody sofa with your cock up my arse,” whispers Q. Bond’s eyes widen. Q blinks. “What? We can swear now.”

James does just that, cursing happily and with relish before grasping Q and tugging him closer. They have learned when and how to sneak their alone time together with Emma around, and this is the first time in many, many weeks where they can have uninterrupted intimacy. James is fairly sure they are both entirely unsure what to do with it, unused to it as they are.

“Upon deep consideration,” James murmurs, grinning as Q snorts. “I’ve decided that that, indeed, is the best course of action in such a situation. It’s been too bloody long since I’ve had to fish your underwear out from the couch cushions.”

Perhaps having time to themselves won’t be such a terrible thing as it seemed only minutes before.

Q bends his back and hums, as if pensive, rocking his hips down against Bond’s own and arching a brow at the stiffness he already finds swelling there. His smile widens, eyes closing as he leans close and draws his lips across the scrape of stubble that seems to perpetually line James’ jaw. He sinks a kiss against him and then rocks forward again, propelling his lips to plant against his pulse. Here, Q lingers - tasting, licking, suckling firmly enough to draw a mark and raise Bond’s hips from the sofa.

Soft curls spread beneath Bond’s hands, coiling around his fingers. He tilts his head back and bares his throat with a groan, lost in the suckling lips tucked against his neck and the slim fingers drawn down his chest and the welcome, warm weight of his quartermaster atop him. They squirm. They adjust. Their legs tangle until each has one thigh of the other against their groin and they can rock themselves to hardness.

James hums, pleased, and draws his hands up and down Q’s back. He has always been slight, always small in Bond's hands, but some days James forgets just how easily Q fits against him, his angles and James’ curves pressing warm together. 

“Hello trouble,” he tells him, smiling when Q snorts.

“I hardly am.”

“But you are a truant today,” Bond points out. “Terrible boy.”

“Considering the amount of days I’ve put in when actually under the weather,” he sighs, “let’s just say that M owes me a year of days off. One for skivving - skivving on behalf of our daughter, no less - isn’t going to bring about the end of days.”

Q pauses, and their eyes meet.

“I hope,” Q amends, grinning as James brings their mouths humming together, and turns Q beneath him.

Slender legs curl against his hips, knobby knees pushed to his ribs and heels slipping down the swell of Bond’s ass. Using his body as leverage, Q arches upward, bringing together groins and stomachs and chests and mouths that rock together into a rampant kiss before parting with a long moan. Q’s eyes are hooded when they meet, lips already reddened and flush from kissing.

“What are you going to do about it,” Q challenges, wickedness in the narrowing twitch of his eyes. “Punish me for being a naughty boy?”

“I certainly should,” James murmurs, leaning near enough for their lips to brush, grinning when he pulls back so that Q can't quite reach to kiss him. “But we have all day for that. All sorts of fun punishments I am sure to come up with.”

When he does kiss Q it is lingering and long, as he spreads one hand against his throat and moves the other to cradle the back of Q’s head.

“Perhaps I’ll keep teasing you until you whimper,” James whispers, moving to work open the buttons of Q’s shirt. “Perhaps I will tongue you until you are completely loose and see if you can keep quiet while I do, hmm?”

“Would you really want me quiet?” Q laughs.

Bond shakes his head, eyes narrowing with a rumble of pleasure. “Never.”

And it’s with this that Q starts to turn and Bond raises up enough to let his partner twist happily to his belly beneath. Arm beneath his cheek, his quartermaster watches with pale green eyes across his shoulder as James kisses his shoulder. He fits a hand beneath him enough to unfasten his trousers, and Q arches acquiescent when Bond’s hands skim beneath the waistbands of slacks and pants alike to bare the rosy swell of his bottom.

“Beautiful,” James tells him, bending to kiss the soft warm skin just where Q’s bottom meets his thighs. “Absolutely bloody marvelous.”

“As though you've never seen it before,” Q scoffs, amused. He stifles another sound as James bites softly at the skin there instead. 

“Always bloody marvelous,” James corrects himself, curling his fingers around Q’s thighs as he draws his nose tickling between his cheeks and up to his tailbone. “You are, entirely. But I am quite a fan of this…” A gentle slap to make Q shift and laugh before James kisses between his shoulders. “Mine.”

Q’s breath leaves him in a lengthy groan, fingernails curved against the sofa. “Yours,” he murmurs, pinning his lower lip between his teeth just enough to feel it throb before letting it slowly slip free. A laugh shivers from him as Bond drags himself down the length of Q’s skinny body again, and Q lifts his ass demanding in his presentation.

“But I should do chores…”

“You should not,” Q says, laughing helplessly again and turning his face against his arm. Words muffled, he pleads, “You really should not.”

“Laundry…”

“No.”

“Vacuuming.”

“No.”

“Dusting.”

“Sod the dusting,” Q exclaims, toes curled in delight as Bond noses against his tailbone again. “Get a move on, 007, we haven’t got all bloody day.”

“Just until two o’clock,” James agrees, not giving Q time to answer before he bends to suck a kiss against him, hands settling to hold Q gently pinned and open as he takes his time.

Beneath him, Q melts in pleasure, immediately relaxed and soft and lovely. He arches further and hums and turns and demands. He waits for James to deem it the appropriate time to part his cheeks wider, to run his tongue against the rim of his hole… he waits and demands only with his body and his sounds, wordless.

Bond buries himself deeper in the welcome warmth between his quartermaster’s legs with a groan. 

Q can think of nothing but heat, wetness, pressure, the burst of Bond’s breath pressed against his skin and the long, low hum that echoes up his body into an answering whimper from Q’s lips in turn. His body acts beyond his volition. Involuntary, his back bends and his chest presses to the sofa, dragging a knee beneath himself to push his bottom higher and demand more.

Bond gives it, all too willingly.

Holding his quartermaster’s cheeks spread wide and fitting his lips against his opening, James sucks a noisy, sloppy kiss against him and waits for Q’s lilting moan to settle before he comes in again. Tongue slipping past clenching muscle, Bond all but smothers himself to give Q the pleasure he wants, he needs, he _demands_ from his partner.

Cock stretching, thickening, with every click of spit or hissing breath, Q reaches between his legs to stroke himself, one knee sliding from the couch and toes catching against the floor. His leg muscles tremble. He himself, entirely, trembles.

“Christ, Bond,” he begs. “Get on with it.”

Bond considers denying him, just he considers bringing him over just like this.

But they have the rest of the morning. They have time enough to play and enjoy each other and distract themselves before they fret and sit in the Aston for too long as they wait to pick up their daughter. 

And he so loves when Q begs this way - demanding and petulant and so sweetly desperate.

So he pulls back, just enough to kiss and nip his way up Q’s spine, nosing his shirt up against his shoulders.

“Bend deeper for me, love,” he coaxes.

Q trills like one of the cats that are no doubt watching them now, his hips tilting higher and cheek and chest pressed to the couch. A deep slope bends into his back, shirt riding up to his armpits, and as James worships another wet kiss against his quartermaster's twitching hole, he takes his own cock in hand to give it a squeeze. It's already solid, tenting up his pants and trousers that he works quickly to undo. He never lets Q's bottom go too long unattended as he bares himself just enough to do the job, stroking the pert swell of a cheek and kissing the other, licking between and downward along the seam of his balls.

Q curses, ineloquent and delighted, tucking one hand back between his legs to stroke himself.

"Hard," he tells his agent. "I need you to go all in on this one, 007. Leave a lasting impact."

The arousal he inspires in Bond with his filthy orders is curiously strengthened by his snorting laughter afterward.

He is incredible.

Bond doesn’t bother to reply to his partner’s wonderfully scandalous twisting of common commands. He doesn’t bother trying to cart him off for proper lubricant, though they really ought to. Spit will have to do, and so after a few copious applications to his throbbing cock, he simply lines up and takes care to fill Q completely before stopping to admire the view.

Q is bent beautifully, spread wide, flushed entirely. James can barely hold himself from shoving in and pounding him breathless into the couch. They’ve become accustomed to weeks without sex - whole, long, numerous weeks - and once their initial consternation passed and they acclimated to this new rhythm, it has only served to further their own eagerness when they do have this time together.

It’s as if they forget, for a time, how beautiful the other is when they’re made delirious with desire and quaking with want.

It’s as if they get to discover, over and over, that not only is their partner a capable partner and parent, but so much more.

Q’s glasses skew sideways as Bond pumps into him, once. Their balls bump together and Q gasps, fingers splaying, as another deep thrust seems to push just an increment further than before, his hole quivering snug against the root of James’ prick. The couch complains creaking beneath another shudder, but Bond’s groan is deep enough as he withdraws that Q can hear nothing else. He nearly pulls out, until just the head of his cock is captured by Q’s twitching muscle, and fills him again so slowly that Q begins to tremble.

There are no orders now. No commands or snorted laughter. Just an ecstatic acceptance and wordless gasps, as Q focuses on nothing more than the sensation of being stuffed full.

Over and over, again and again, until James bends over him entirely, curling his fingers in Q’s hair and pressing his lips in a hot lingering kiss against the back of his neck. He needn’t say anything either, his body speaks volumes of his devotion and adoration, his need and his pleasure in being able to have this with Q, always.

When he does speak, it is praise, it is warm words whispered through the soft forest of dark curls. It is something to make Q laugh, it is a twist of his tone to send him trembling again.

He tells Q to let go of his cock. He curls his own hand around it immediately after, not leaving it unattended. His quartermaster arches, head tilted back between his shoulders and voice pulled long in a wavering groan. He bucks down against the tight tunnel of Bond’s fist, bends his back to present himself to get fucked deep. Slowly the weight of his agent’s ardor finds his arms trembling and Q slips down from where he’d propped himself, cheek pressed to the couch and knees sliding back. James keeps him up just enough to stroke his cock, as harder, deeper, faster he begins to fuck him into the couch.

Each thrust snaps sharp from Q’s lips. Each long burial of his agent’s stiff prick inside him jerks his voice down to a low groan. The sofa squeaks its protest as Bond begins to fuck Q as he asked - hard enough to leave a lasting impact.

“Christ,” he moans, turning his head to watch Bond behind him. Though he’s rounded a little around the edges in his time away from the field, he’s even more handsome for it. Still rugged, still strong, but with a gentling that shows clearly the change in their lives. Q has always found the man impossibly attractive, but that he should become more so in the slow, softening greying of retirement is consummately unfair.

He’s never been more handsome.

James draws a hand through Q’s sweaty hair to slip it from his forehead and kisses there, whispering something in French that makes Q shiver, even though he doesn't understand. He needn’t, linguistically, he can feel the meaning through the shuddering and pulsing of his body against Bond’s. He mumbles something back and allows his voice to break when James twists his wrist, rocks hard against his prostate, and pushes him over.

It’s a beautifully messy orgasm. The couch will need to be cleaned and perhaps covered with a cushion to avoid curious felines and children sitting upon it for a time. But it is entirely theirs, their intimacy, their mess, their passion and adoration and affection. Bond groans Q’s name reverently against him and allows his own pleasure to flood him, easing them both heavy to the couch after.

James’ voice returns to him with low hums and deep grunts of pleasure. He wraps all limbs around his quartermaster and turns him more comfortably on the sofa with him, nuzzling the wet curls against the back of his neck. Q squirms, not to escape but simply to feel the press of his partner’s body against his, made slick with sweat - to feel the sharp pull of muscle inside him with a laughing groan from the deep fucking that he requested.

Q checks his watch, absently, and for the first time today is pleased by what he sees.

“There’s time for more before we have to go,” he offers, grinning when Bond laughs a groan against his shoulder. “What? We’ve already made a mess, what’s one more?”

“You think you can take it again?”

“I didn’t say that,” Q snorts, delighted as he brings James’ messy fingers to his lips and presses a kiss to them.

His agent groans and curls warmer, more protective, around Q. “I’ve been aching for a good fuck,” he admits. “Been far too tense lately. Something to do with sending our little girl to school, I think.”

“See? Now aren’t you glad I took a sick day today,” Q says, tilting his head to look back at Bond across his shoulder. His nose wrinkles in amusement to find pale blue eyes, heavy-lidded, meeting his own.

“You aren’t sick.”

“Unwell.”

“You’re not that, either. You’re quite fine, in fact.”

“Shut up,” Q grins, resting his cheek back against the couch and using the cool leather to ease his blush. “You, however, are sorely in need of stress relief. Treatment is in order. It’ll be rough, but I think you can take it. What do you say, 007?”

“You may need to work manually,” James advises him, and both snort, unable to keep composure. Another nuzzle, fond and loving, and James presses a soft kiss to the side of Q’s nose.

“I can do that,” Q tells him, turning in his arms and settling close to his agent. “‘Til the inner workings respond enough for a more deliberate thrust.”


End file.
